


Reap the Hurricane

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Hurricane [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fantasy, Immigration & Emigration, M/M, Magical Creatures, Other Worlds, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 11:20:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 77,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1508609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, a number of people who despair of fixing the wizarding world seek to emigrate to new, magical, but uninhabited worlds where they can live in peace. On the eve of his journey to a world called Hurricane, accompanied by his friends and godson, Harry discovers that Draco Malfoy’s name is also on the list of immigrants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A World Broken, A Life Without

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in a series of stories called the Hurricane series. It is complete, but I'll be posting the other two fics relatively slowly, as I need to make sure that the italics in them are all done correctly (there's a lot of them).
> 
> The title is, as is probably obvious, a variant of the saying, “Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.”

Harry sighed and put down the paper on the table, then went to wake Andromeda and Teddy. Andromeda would spend another hour or so dozing in bed, but still preferred to have Harry rather than a _Tempus_ Charm wake her up. Teddy needed to be up so that Harry could corral him into the bath with the minimal amount of splashed water.

Teddy’s eyes were already open and his head turned towards the door of the room when Harry knocked. Harry smiled and came in to pick him up and nuzzle his forehead against Teddy’s. Teddy giggled and did it back to him.

“Ready to wake up and face the day?” Harry asked, switching Teddy to the side so he could carry him more easily on his hip.

“New day!” Teddy said, and waved his hands through the air, his hair changing to a mixture of lime-green and canary-yellow stripes. “No bath!”

Harry kept smiling, but turned the corner towards the bathroom quickly. Teddy began wailing, and tried to change his body into something softer and more slippery, something that could slide out of Harry’s hold and hide itself quickly in a corner. Luckily, he wasn’t very good at that yet.

“No _bath!_ ” Teddy shrieked in Harry’s face as Harry plopped him straight into the middle of the bathtub and turned on the water.

“Soon enough, you’ll get your wish,” Harry muttered, and prevented a break for freedom up the sides of the tub. Soon Teddy’s arms and hands and face were appreciably scrubbed, and Harry had just worked in a handful of shampoo when he heard the distinctive _chime_ of the hearth that announced a Floo call.

“Aunt Hermione!” Teddy screeched, on the basis of no evidence, and tried to jump out of the tub and run towards the fireplace.

Harry wrestled him back into place, and ignored the chime as it sounded again. Anyone who had any business contacting him at this time of morning knew about his routine and would just wait until a more convenient hour. And as for people who had no business contacting him, Harry was tired of them. “Not right now,” he said, and began to wash the shampoo from Teddy’s hair. Teddy closed his eyes against the water and howled as pitifully as though he hadn’t just spent yesterday afternoon jumping into puddles for fun.

“No bath,” he whispered. 

“No baths in Hurricane,” Harry agreed, and gave a quick swipe to Teddy’s legs with a washcloth, followed by Cleaning Charms, before he lifted him out. Frankly, he was less concerned about those bits of Teddy that other people wouldn’t see.

Teddy’s clean hair changed to purple with orange polka dots the moment he felt the water fall away. He hadn’t inherited his father’s lycanthropy, but he sure hated the water as much as any dog, Harry thought, sitting him on the toilet and starting to dry him. Teddy used the loo, a recent big-boy achievement he was very proud of, and then waited while Harry dried his hair and held out the toothbrush for him.

“No baths in Hurricane!” he said, laughing up at Harry, and then pointed accusingly when Harry cast a few Cleaning Charms on his own hair. “No bath for _you_.”

“No,” Harry agreed, and held out his hand. Teddy snatched his, and Harry led him into the kitchen, calling Andromeda as they passed the door of her bedroom. She muttered something and rolled over in her sleep. Harry thought he would have to take that for now. He picked Teddy up and set him in the specially adapted chair that kept him from falling down when he was at the table. “Older people don’t always have to take baths.”

“Older people,” Teddy mimicked, in a deep analysis of the unfairness of the universe, and then saw the small cubes of cheese Harry was setting out and forgot about all the unfairness but that of not having the food immediately inside him. “Cheese, _cheese_ , cheese,” he said. “I want cheese.” He bounced up and down in his chair, and this time his hair turned a slightly nauseating mixture of orange and yellow.

“Yes, yes, _coming_ ,” Harry muttered, and dumped them in a bowl along with some of the corn that Teddy hadn’t eaten last night.

“I want cheese _now_.”

“Use the right word,” Harry told him, and waited until Teddy had muttered an ungracious “Please” before he handed over the impromptu breakfast and reached for the cup of tea he had abandoned on the table when the owl came in with the _Daily Prophet._

The _Prophet_ was still lying over on the other side of the room. Harry gave it an absent scowl. The lead story was one that he didn’t want Teddy catching a glimpse of, because he would know some of the people in those pictures and the situation was more complicated than Harry wanted to explain to a two-year-old.

_Although I doubt even the Ministry could explain why Bill was arrested just for walking down the wrong street at the wrong time._

It ran deeper than that, of course. There were so many things that someone like Bill could be arrested for, these days. For being a blood traitor’s son, for example. Or for having a Veela wife. Or for bearing the werewolf scars on his face that could “frighten someone,” the justification for the last time he was arrested.

Harry scowled. Bill was near losing his job as a Curse-Breaker at Gringotts. This last arrest might be the push that would make the goblins sack him. Harry hoped that he quit first, that he told them he was going to Hurricane in a few days and wouldn’t need the scraps of work they were offering him anyway.

The Floo chimed again. Harry turned towards it and waved his wand to open it, making sure that he kept his body between the hearth and Teddy. An attack from that direction had only happened once, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you forgot.

Hermione’s face appeared, so anxious that Harry felt his gut twist. He ignored the guilt for dismissing the call earlier, though. He _had_ been busy with Teddy, and he couldn’t have known that this would turn out to be an unusual morning.

“If this is about Bill, I already know,” he said gently. “The _Prophet_ really doesn’t leave you in much doubt.”

“Not that,” Hermione said. “I was looking at the list of people who are going to Hurricane.”

Harry paid attention at that. Such lists were supposedly kept secret, so that no one could follow an old enemy to a new world and continue the grudge there. But it was open knowledge that they were traded back and forth in the Ministry and that people were placed on more desirable ones according to the bribes they could afford, so Hermione had made sure that she had access to their list, if only to protect all of them.

“Did they drop off Victoire again?” he asked, feeling his stomach twist. “Or Angelina? I know that George said she ought to be safe after the last bribe that he paid to the Wizengamot, but—”

Hermione shook her head. “It’s a name that’s been added.” She took a deep breath of the kind that she used when she thought Harry was going to explode into a lightning-hurling fit. “Harry, it’s Draco Malfoy.”

Harry stared at her for so long that he thought he could feel the tea chilling in his hand, and Teddy demanded grapes. Harry got up to get them, but shook his head as he did so.

Malfoy’s father was in prison and his mother had fled England when it became clear that the Wizengamot probably wouldn’t excuse her, or any of the adult Death Eaters, unless they could come up with money that they didn’t have. He had every reason to want to stay here. For the most part, it was people who could gather up their whole families who were going to emigrate.

“You’re sure that it’s not a guess?” Harry asked when he came back to the fireplace and could give Hermione his full attention. “Or a random misprint?” Some of the Ministry officials would write down names that someone had simply told them, and were prone to guessing on unfamiliar accents or words gasped down a speaking tube or through a dirty hearth.

Hermione shook her head. “I asked a few people who knew, and they confirmed it’s definitely him. I think he’s given up on his parents.”

Harry shut his eyes. They were going to Hurricane to leave old grudges behind, to ensure that Teddy and Victoire had the chance to grow up in a world that wouldn’t eat them alive for their associations with the Weasleys and Harry Potter, but that wouldn’t work if one of the old grudges came with them.

“I’m going to go talk to him,” he said abruptly, standing up. “But I’ll stop by Gringotts first.”

“Harry, you _can’t_ ,” Hermione said, and her eyes flickered with the vivid fear that had become a part of all their lives since the war, as the Ministry fell in on itself with corruption and public fears encouraged arrests of them one day and ridiculous valorization the next. “We’ll need the money for the crossing at the border—”

“I have a plan for that,” Harry said, and smiled, not pleasantly. As he had thought would happen, that shut Hermione up. She was well-aware of the way that Harry had held himself back the last few years, because there was Teddy, and he could protect his friends better by speaking softly and carrying a lot of Galleons than throwing around his reputation, which would only work once.

Hermione thought he would intimidate the guards on the portal to Hurricane. Harry had something different in mind. After all, they _were_ leaving forever.

But for now, he had another task in mind. He called to Andromeda, told her in the tense voice she wouldn’t ignore that he had something to do and she would have to get up and take care of Teddy for the moment, and then stepped out of the house. He had to walk several dozen steps before the anti-Apparition wards ceased and he stood in the middle of what looked like a normal street in Hogsmeade. 

_If the fates are kind, there won’t be any need for those wards in Hurricane._

But for now, it was time to go and make sure that they wouldn’t need them. Harry Apparated, calculations as to the amount of money left in his bank vault running through his head. Bring too little and Malfoy wouldn’t back off; bring too much, and he might think he could get greedy.

Harry would have to handle this just right. Yes, he could always do to Malfoy what he planned to do to the border guards, but that would cause an unfortunate amount of confusion and noise just before they were due to leave Earth, and the emigration had already been delayed several times.

*

“Master Draco.”

Wheezy’s soft voice made Draco look up from the _Prophet_ and his idle scanning of its many justifications for Bill Weasley’s arrest. Wheezy was the only house-elf left to him now, and she bowed with a creaking dignity that made Draco feel a little better. He sat up and attempted to nod back with the same dignity.

“What is it, Wheezy?”

“Harry Potter is at the gates, to be seeing Master Draco,” Wheezy said, and then went still and looked at him with liquid dark eyes.

Draco blinked. He reckoned he should have expected this, but he hadn’t. He sat still for a moment, hands strumming the paper, and then nodded and stood up.

“Show him to the White Drawing Room, please, Wheezy,” he said, and stepped out of the dining room to take the long way there. As he walked, he cast Cleaning Charms and Refreshing Charms, smoothing down his hair and picking food out of his teeth. He wanted to look his best when he met Potter, not for any specific reason but because he thought that was the best way to do it.

He stepped into the White Drawing Room two minutes later and found that Wheezy had lit a fire, which cast a soft yellow glow on the pale walls and whiter furniture. Draco took a seat on the most comfortable couch and waited, wondering how Potter would open the conversation. He could think of at least three ways, but didn’t know which one was most likely. He had lost that instinctive sense of being able to predict Potter’s movements once they left Hogwarts.

_If you ever had it._

Draco smiled slightly and leaned back against the couch. He could evaluate his own actions as a child more easily now, but the random clots of colored emotions that drifted across his mental vision when it came to Potter were hard to see through, still.

Potter stepped in, a taller and more slender figure than Draco had expected. Then again, public photographs of Potter had been rare since he quit Auror training to take care of his godson. He stood where he was, one hand clenched low at his side. Draco sat up and regarded him with silent attention.

“How much?” Potter asked at last, and that was none of the three ways Draco had thought this would go. He blinked and cleared his throat.

“How much what?” he asked. “I don’t know what you’ve come about.”

“How many Galleons to transfer your name to some other list, some other world, for emigration?” Potter asked, in a voice that growled, and took a single step closer. “Because you’re not coming to Hurricane.”

Draco smiled slowly, and didn’t rise to the challenge in any way. “I don’t see why not,” he said. “My aunt and my cousin are going there. They’re the only members of my family I have left, now. I’d like to connect with them, and that seems easier to do in a new world than in this one.”

“You _still_ won’t come in contact with Teddy,” Potter said, and coiled like a snake. “I’ll make sure of that.”

“I was under the impression that my Aunt Andromeda was equally his guardian,” Draco said, and stretched his eyes wide. “Has that changed? Has she signed custody entirely over to you now?”

Potter watched him. Then he said, “I have no intention of letting someone who despised Teddy’s dad _and_ Teddy’s mum near him. You may be his cousin. That doesn’t mean much when you hate his parents, you hate his grandparents, and you hate his guardian. He doesn’t _need_ more changes in his life right now.”

“Which, of course, is why you’re emigrating to a new world that won’t have most of the comforts of home,” Draco sighed, and laughed silently when Potter glared at him. “In truth, Potter, I don’t despise my aunt or Teddy. I was uncomfortable with his father, yes, but he proved himself more than just a werewolf. I think I can keep that out of my conversations with Teddy. And I never had the chance to know my cousin Nymphadora. As for more general blood prejudice, I’m content to leave that to rot in my father’s cell with him. It won’t do me much good in Hurricane.”

“Why are you leaving your parents?” Potter asked. He was still poised, but perhaps he had accepted that Draco wouldn’t attack immediately. He shifted to place something on the floor behind him, and Draco heard the clink of coins.

“I don’t see why I should have to answer that,” Draco said. “Unless _you_ want to answer why the Great Harry Potter is reduced to giving bribes.”

Potter showed his teeth. He still hadn’t sat down. Draco gestured at the nearest chair, behind him, but Potter didn’t appear to notice the gesture, or let it into his consciousness if he did. “It’s the only way to get anything done in the wizarding world these days,” he said. “Although it seems it won’t work with you.” He tilted his head in silent question.

“The Wizengamot isn’t going to free my father this side of doomsday,” Draco answered. “I thought at first they would, when I saw how many of the pure-bloods in the Ministry managed to achieve power and turn against your lot, but that’s not the way it works. They’re preying on the _weak,_ not people who were on one side of the war or another, and if you don’t have enough money, you don’t play.”

Potter nodded. “And your mother?”

Draco shook his head. He still had trouble thinking about the last letter his mother had sent him, full of excuses and pleadings and demands for money. Those were the hardest to ignore, but Draco would leave her his Gringotts account when he exited England, and that would have to do. What would he do with gold in his new world? “Does not matter.”

Potter spent some more time regarding him. Then he sighed and nodded. “Even if you hate me, you might do Teddy good, as long as you don’t hate any of his blood family,” he muttered. “Fine. Come along. But if I hear you say one word to him that sounds like you’re criticizing his parents…” 

“You won’t,” Draco said. _What good would those words do me?_ “And you don’t mind if I hate _you_?”

Potter snorted. “Too many people in the world whose hatred could affect me more.” He picked up the bag of Galleons, thought about it for a moment, and then added, “In both worlds.” He turned away.

Draco sat up and fired back in spite of himself, because he had spent too many years at the very bottom of Potter’s list of dangers. “And you think you can judge, just from _this_ , that I won’t be any trouble? The Great Harry Potter, reading the hearts and minds of men?” It was one specific line the _Daily Prophet_ liked to trot out, on those days when they were on Potter’s side.

Potter paused and tilted a small smile back at him. “I’m relying on my judgment, yes,” he said. “I came here to bribe you, but obviously _that_ judgment wasn’t correct. I still think that you could cause trouble with the Weasleys or someone else whom you hate because you can’t let the past go. But if it’s only with me, I’ll control myself.”

“And if it’s not?” Draco asked. It was true that he wanted to go to Hurricane because of Teddy and Andromeda, but he didn’t like the thought of living in close proximity with Weasleys.

Potter’s small smile grew, although Draco could only witness half of it because Potter was standing in profile to him. “Then you should think about how far Hurricane is from the Ministry, and the way that so many of the people there will like me,” he said gently. “Just think about it, that’s all.” He turned away.

Draco stared at his back. Then he said, “You wouldn’t dare—you wouldn’t dare _kill_ someone you’ll need to help you resist the winds. A full-grown wizard who’s capable of powerful magic will be more valuable than any aggravation I cause.”

“Not if that aggravation breaks up work lines and makes people distrust each other,” Potter said, without turning back around. “As for the labor that killing you might cost us…” He spread his fingers and blew between them.

A wind picked up, howling around the room, whipping the curtains back and forth and rattling the small ivory models of dragons on the mantelpiece. Draco shrank back into the couch despite himself, and then gasped as an invisible, giant hand covered his mouth and nose. His lungs shrieked for air, and his eyes watered as he tried not to expose the depth of his panic to Potter.

The hand vanished the moment before Draco would have given in and shouted for help. Potter lifted his shoulders in a shrug and turned to give him one more dose of that faint smile before he walked out of the Manor.

Draco breathed deeply, refusing to allow the quick breaths his body wanted, and listened until he heard the front door shut.

Then he stood up and went to write an owl to Gringotts. He needed money of his own, and even if he planned to leave the vast majority of it to his mother, this was a reasonable expense now. He wanted to know everything current about Harry Potter, all the gossip that circulated through the Ministry and the stories that were more substantiated than that, from the people who would still talk to him. 

He had thought in terms of sharing a world with his aunt and cousin before. He wondered now whether having a whole one between him and Potter would be enough.

*

Bill came home late that evening, still shaken from the encounter, but free. Fleur was waiting for him, holding Victoire, and Harry was there with Teddy, and Ron and Hermione, and Percy, more anxious than any of them. He still clung to tattered vestiges of belief in the goodness of the Ministry, but complemented it now with silent claps of the back and handshakes every time one of his siblings came out unscathed from an encounter. 

He pounded Bill’s back now, second only after the embrace that Bill got from his wife and daughter, and then stepped back. Bill turned to Harry, his face pale and his scars shining.

“Everyone else is safe,” Harry answered him. “Your mum and dad are still packing, George and Angelina are establishing those final wards on the joke shop, and Charlie’s coming in from Romania tonight. And Ginny’s securing all those high-altitude brooms for us from the Harpies,” he added as an afterthought. Ginny had made some good money in the past few years as a Seeker, and she was returning it for the most part to the team who had given it to her, buying brooms and leather Quidditch gear and whatever else she thought might give them an extra chance on a high-wind planet like Hurricane.

Bill shut his eyes and nodded. “The day after tomorrow,” he murmured. “That’s going to make it all worthwhile.”

Fleur closed her eyes and hugged him silently. Victoire danced around her parents, holding up her arms and whining gently, until Ron picked her up and held her. “I cannot believe eet,” Fleur whispered. “The world…eet was supposed to be _better_ after the war, yes?”

“It was,” Harry answered. “But it isn’t, and this is the way that we’re dealing with it.”

Fleur nodded, and then she and Bill turned away in a manner that signaled, to Harry at least, that they were done talking for the night. Harry raised his eyebrows at the others, and Ron bore Victoire off to put her to bed. Percy departed through the Floo after one more hug of everyone in sight. Only Hermione lingered, staring anxiously at Harry.

“Malfoy said that he wanted to emigrate to Hurricane to be near Teddy and Andromeda,” Harry answered her. “Andromeda’s a grown woman and can decide what she wants to do. And I don’t mind him being near Teddy as long as he can control himself when he talks about Remus and Tonks.”

“But you?” Hermione asked. “And what about Ron and the others, and how they’re going to react to him?”

Harry thought of the scars on Bill’s face, the way he was sure she was doing, but shrugged. “He won’t take a bribe. We don’t have the time to bribe other people to get his name taken off the list. I don’t think I could threaten him into backing off.” Hermione bit her lip, but nodded. Harry had developed into a good enough judge of character since the war that the others relied on him when deciding if there was someone they needed to bribe or talk to or confront, or someone they could trust. “I did warn him that Hurricane is a long way from anywhere he’s loved or valued, and it’s in his best interest to get along with the neighbors.”

“Oh, Harry, you _didn’t_ ,” Hermione said, the way she always did whenever Harry showed off his wandless magic.

Harry simply shrugged, feeling the words bump along in his mind like stones. _I’m going to protect Teddy and my friends no matter what happens. The world I saved immediately collapsed into feuding and fighting over the scraps from before the war. I don’t have an obligation to it._

_I’ll guard you. No matter what happens._

_No matter who I have to kill to do it._


	2. Riding the Wind

“You have everything, Harry?” Andromeda asked softly, shrinking the last trunk and dropping it in her pocket.  
  
Harry looked up from the book on farming, and nodded before he shrank it, in turn, and secreted it in one of the many pockets in his own robe. It was time to admit that he probably  _wouldn’t_ know much about Hurricane before they got there, and it was silly to think he could make their lives easier by stuffing himself with information. Instead, he would have to go through the portal and take his chances, like everyone else, in a world that was  _different._  
  
And he would protect Teddy. That was the point of this, the point of his life.  
  
“Yes, I think so,” Harry said, and stood up, staring around the house one more time. They’d taken all their books, all their clothes, all of Teddy’s toys, and some other necessary things like the kettle and some food and his broom, and of course mementoes of his parents and Teddy’s parents and Ted Tonks. But there was so little reason to haul furniture through the portal that Harry wasn’t planning on doing it, except for a few shrunken chairs that were comfortable for Andromeda, and one small table, and Teddy’s special chair.   
  
Hermione, he thought, was probably bringing the entire contents of her house. She had argued with Harry when she found out that he wasn’t packing his dining room table or taking his kitchen cabinets off the walls, but Harry had faced her down and pointed out that he would need  _something_ to keep him busy when they got to Hurricane, and it might as well be conjuring and shaping new furniture. She’d backed down after that.  
  
“Then let’s go,” Andromeda said, with a whiffling little sigh as she looked around their house once more. She was going, Harry knew, less because her life was hard on Earth than because there were so many memories of her husband and daughter here. In a new world, she might not feel their deaths as much.  
  
“Are we going?” Teddy’s hair was a flat black with purple undertones this time. He raised his arms to Harry. “You have the monkey.”   
  
Harry nodded, picked him up, and patted the sealed pocket where he was carrying the shrunken trunk of Teddy’s toys. “Yes, I promise.”  
  
“Want the monkey  _now_ ,” Teddy said, and laid his head against Harry’s neck.   
  
“You can’t have him when we go through the portal,” Harry said gently, for at least the fiftieth time, as he shut the door behind him and locked it. He would turn over the key to the Ministry officials at the portal. “He would fly away.”  
  
Teddy sighed, as if to say that powerful magical winds in the portal were no match for his need for his monkey, but fell grumpily silent. Harry chuckled, held him more firmly, and reached out to take Andromeda’s arm. They were ready to Apparate.  
  
*  
  
Draco arrived early at the portal to Hurricane. No matter what Potter might have said or not said, he didn’t trust the git not to set up a final block of some kind here, perhaps by bribing guards who would pretend that Draco’s name wasn’t on the list.  
  
But everything was as it should be. The Ministry officials had chosen the road from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts to set up the official emigration points. Once the Unspeakables had opened the roads to Hurricane and the other worlds that people had chosen to emigrate to, the gates could be moved around and positioned in any spot that had enough room for them. Draco heard chattering, as he walked past the different portals, about how teams of Unspeakables and Aurors had run the portals across England, ending up in Scotland only after several terrifying journeys past Muggle cities.  
  
Secretaries waited to collect the keys of houses and any other property that emigrants were leaving behind; officially, it would become “temporary property of the Ministry” until such time as someone in the world left behind wanted to buy it. Draco reached for the key of the Manor, and then had to stand still, shivering, before he could join one of the official lines.  
  
He could leave it to his mother. She might still come back to England when she heard the news about him leaving the Malfoy vault to her.  
  
But no, she would never be able to live in it as he did, as born Malfoys did; half the wards and heirlooms wouldn’t respond to her, and any children she might have after this, with someone other than Lucius, wouldn’t be able to inherit, either. Better to leave the house to anyone who wanted it, to have them make over the wards and the rooms in their own image, and start a new line that way.  
  
Because, incredible though it seemed to Draco with the decaying state of the world all around him, there were still people who wanted to live here.  
  
“Draco Malfoy,” he told the slender, white-clad witch behind the heavy oak desk when he finally got to the front of the queue. The sight of the desk squatting on fresh grass made him want to snort, but he held the noise firmly in. These secretaries were one of the last lines of defense before Draco would finally get to leave. If he angered them, then they might deny him passage, and no one cared about him enough to speak up for his right to go to Hurricane.  
  
The witch stared at him in a way that said she recognized his name, and her fingers reached out for one sheet of paper as if she was going to shuffle it beneath the others. Draco smiled charmingly and held out his hand for her to shake; in his palm were two bright Galleons, concealed from any watcher by the neat twist of his fingers.  
  
The secretary smiled back and shook his hand, making the coins disappear faster than Draco had palmed them. “Very well, of course,” she murmured, and then shuffled the papers around in a more natural manner this time. She gave Draco a bright, curious stare when she finally located the list Draco was sure he was on. “You’re going to the same world as Harry Potter?”  
  
“Is that a problem?” Draco asked, and matched her bright-toothed smile for bright-toothed smile.  
  
“Oh, I suppose not,” said the secretary. “I sometimes grow curious about the reasons for people’s choices, that’s all.” She waited, but when Draco didn’t gratify her curiosity, she sighed and began to speak to him about the forms he needed to fill out to give the Manor key up and ensure that his vault passed to his mother.  
  
Draco was still in the middle of the second form, which was more complicated and could result in the Ministry seizing his vault for “inconveniences” if he filled it out incorrectly, when he heard a swelling murmur from the queue behind him. He turned his head.  
  
The Weasleys were advancing in a giant cluster over the hill, led by the matriarch with her daughter beside her. Draco shuddered a little when Mrs. Weasley’s bright eyes focused on him and then swept on. The woman who had killed his aunt might have no objection about ridding the world—any world—of her nephew, too.  
  
Behind them came that absurd prefect, and the Muggle-loving father, and Weasley himself with Granger close beside him, and the remaining twin with his Gryffindor Chaser lover, and the two brothers Draco didn’t know as well, though he could appreciate the loveliness of the silver-haired woman who walked beside the scarred one. And Potter, walking with Teddy’s hand in his, and Draco’s surviving aunt cringing in his shadow.  
  
Draco didn’t know whether the murmuring came from the fact that Potter was emigrating and many people around him wouldn’t believe that until they saw it, or the fact that the Weasleys were by far the largest of any family group waiting to leave Earth. He decided that it had nothing to do with him, and turned back to his form.  
  
When he signed his name with a flourish, he had to nudge the secretary’s hand with the edge of the paper; she was one of those who had started watching Potter and his family with an open mouth, as though hypnotized. She came back to life with a second nudge, though, and flushed viciously as she took the paper away from him and mumbled some congratulations on his emigration. Draco made sure that he didn’t still have the Manor key in his pockets, and then turned and walked towards the portals.  
  
They were on top of the single slight hill between Hogsmeade and Hogwarts, where the ground began to rise towards the Forbidden Forest. Draco found it hard to look at them. They resembled perfectly round holes in air, but glowed with a sickening and constantly changing medley of lights. The one with  _Hurricane_ on a crude banner on the path before it changed between purple and green and blue with monotonous regularity.  
  
Draco took his place in the queue and looked around at some of the others.  _Arcadia,_ said the banner over the portal with the largest queue, and Draco curled his lip. He had heard that that was a world where magical fruit bloomed in an hour and fell into waiting hands, and the animals were gentle and harmless.  
  
Which meant, of course, that people would pour into it and set up the same rivalries and hatreds and institutions as before, because they wouldn’t have anything to occupy their time, not even getting food. Draco shook his head. He might have been tempted to emigrate there, but the competition to get on the list was fierce, with names appearing and disappearing as certain families offered larger and larger bribes, and he knew that people were already competing for land, too, despite the fact that all land in Arcadia was supposedly equally beautiful.   
  
 _No, thanks._  
  
There were other names on banners, too: Elysium, the Fortunate Isles, Epithalamion. Draco had heard rumors about all of them that discouraged him from even trying to put his name on the list. Hurricane had at least been named honestly, and because of it, the smallest number of people was emigrating there.  
  
Draco looked over his shoulder, and saw that Potter and the Weasleys had joined the queue now. He wondered if anyone else noticed, as he did, the way that Potter made sure to keep his body between Teddy and the silver-haired Weasley girl, and the rest of the wizards who strolled back and forth or shouted at each other or tried to pretend they were part of the official and bustling excitement.  
  
 _If someone tries to threaten one of them, then he’ll destroy them._  
  
That was actually a comforting thought, for Draco. He would rather go to a highly magical world with someone who had power like Potter’s than to a gentler, tamer place with a group of lesser wizards.  
  
*  
  
Harry could already see the signs of people slowly moving into position, and although he had brought all his Galleons with him for a last-minute bribe, the way Hermione had insisted, he knew it wouldn’t come down to that. The realization warmed his muscles and made his mind bright and clear. No matter what happened, he would protect the people he loved.  
  
 _No matter what, no matter who._  
  
There were some people who hated him, and other people who simply thought that a “hero” like Harry Potter shouldn’t be “allowed” to leave the wizarding world. They had made common cause; Harry had picked up the rumors easily from the Ministry, where no one could keep quiet and few people stayed bribed. They would allow him to get into the queue for Hurricane, but they didn’t plan to let him through the portal.  
  
Harry stretched, as if casually, and watched a number of the supposed Ministry officials at the portal, checking people’s names against their list, flinch. He nodded, and called softly to the magic that, since the war, simply kept growing in him, kept rising, and came like the storms in Hurricane were said to, suddenly and unpredictably. It wanted to be used, and he would give it a splendid field to play in today.  
  
It was strange, the feeling his magic made ring through his body as it rose. He had expected that it would feel exactly like the power he ordinarily put into his wand, or else like something wild and uncontrollable, riding one of those storms he could compare it to. But it was something more workman-like, the knowledge he  _could_ do something, like knowing that he had the strength to lift a heavy box. It was there. It wanted to be used. So he used it.   
  
Power in its purest form.  
  
They inched nearer the front of the queue. Only a few hundred wizards would go to Hurricane, and Harry didn’t know most of them; he was glad of that. And in Hurricane, there would be no papers to sell his photograph to, no sites of his victories like Hogwarts to make pilgrimages to.  
  
If they could get there.  
  
The portal had changed to sending out green light, and the ring of “officials” had tightened, by the time they reached the front. Three secretaries leaned over to check the forms that Molly, standing in front of her children and grandchild and adopted family as if she could shield all of them from retribution, presented. Two of them nodded and murmured, but their eyes were on Harry.  
  
Harry smiled at them. Unaccountably, that made them recoil. He chuckled silently, and handed Teddy to Andromeda.  
  
“They’re going to try something,” he said softly, to her inquiring look. “I want to make sure that Teddy is out of harm’s way.”  
  
Andromeda nodded, and stepped back until she nearly collided with George and Angelina. Ever since the war, she was more than nervous about potential violence; she wanted it to happen far away from her if it happened at all.  
  
 _I don’t think I can oblige this time,_ Harry thought, as he watched the Aurors in the robes of Ministry flunkies work their way towards him, and felt others crowding in behind. They thought that he wasn’t any good at battle, since he had quit Auror training. They didn’t take into account the fact that one could study on one’s own.  
  
And none of them had heard anything about his wandless magic except as fears and rumors. Harry still needed his wand for precision charms of any kind, like cleaning Teddy or heating water to boil for tea. But the wandless power sweeping through him was good for grand attacks and dramatic effects.  
  
And that was exactly what he wanted now—exactly what he needed to warn the Ministry back.  
  
He spread his hands apart as the first two “officials” stopped in front of him, sporting brittle smiles. Two others were directly behind him. The rest of the Weasleys had gone ahead, even Hermione, and Harry thought he saw Malfoy’s pale head nodding somewhere off in the distance, too. He was pleased to think that the prat hadn’t gone through the portal yet and would be a witness to this. Perhaps it would discourage him from doing anything stupid when they reached Hurricane.  
  
“Mr. Potter,” said the lead Auror, one of the instructors Harry recognized from his brief stint in training. “We’re so sorry, but there’s a problem with your emigration forms. We’ll have to ask you to return with us.”  
  
Harry hefted the bag of Galleons he carried, unshrunken, on his shoulder in silent question. He would do as Hermione wanted him to first, and try to bribe them. But he already knew it would do no good, and saliva slammed into his mouth and adrenaline into his veins. He shook slightly as he stood there.  
  
“No, you shouldn’t try that,” said the other Auror, one Harry didn’t know but who couldn’t be anything but an Auror with the way she stood and moved. She reached out to take Harry’s arm.  
  
Harry smiled at her, and released the magic from his spread hands.  
  
The air in front of him and behind him ripped apart, and the Aurors went flying off their feet. Harry braced himself against the pull and lifted his arms, and whirling columns of wind seized the Aurors and lifted them straight up into the air, rotating them constantly and wrapping their robes around their heads.  
  
Harry watched, panting. He could have done this all day. He could have lifted them straight up into the air, higher than they could climb on the best professional broom, and held them there until he tired and let them fall. He could have blown them out of the country. He could have broken their bones with sharp blows until their bodies contained nothing but small, soft powdery fragments. Any and all of that power was his.  
  
But Victoire and Teddy were watching, and there were people in the queue behind him who might not get to Hurricane if he did any of that. The Ministry would certainly send more Aurors to arrest him, and it would all become more tiresome than it was worth.  
  
Harry laughed under his breath and perched the Aurors back on the ground. They cowered there, arms tucked over their heads, and Harry knew the time had come to move. He snatched Teddy back from Andromeda and pelted towards the portal, past the other Weasleys and the officials who were really there to check people’s papers.  
  
One woman opened her mouth and stepped forwards as if she would get in the way. Harry smiled at her, and she shivered and ducked her head. Then Harry whirled to the side, still holding Teddy tightly, and waved the others in.  
  
Bill and Fleur went through first, holding hands and both cradling Victoire between them. The green light swallowed them up. Charlie and George and Angelina and Andromeda made it in, Andromeda giving Harry a long steady look on the way that meant they would have words later. Harry ignored that. If she was so upset about the way he was raising her grandson, then she should take a more active part in it.  
  
Arthur turned around as if he wanted to fight the Aurors, but Ginny shook her head and yanked sharply on his arm, and in the end Arthur turned back and let her herd him along. They went through, and Molly. Percy was right behind them, eyes darting nervously between Harry and Ron and Hermione as if he thought there was a chance that Harry would hurt his best friends. Harry smiled back with teeth bared, and Percy gave it up as a bad job. He would probably talk to Harry later along with Andromeda, though.  
  
Next was Malfoy. He gave Harry a single cool look that seemed to score flakes off his bones, and then a nod. He bowed his head slightly as he passed through the portal, which Harry thought was ridiculous. The upper edge of the round gate was well above his head.  
  
And then came Ron and Hermione, staying behind for him as they had all through the war, and lifting their wands when the Aurors who hadn’t directly engaged Harry moved hesitantly forwards. Harry shook his head at the Aurors. “You don’t want to do that,” he said softly.  
  
Winds opened around him at his next gesture, unfolding in the air with literal knife edges that ripped through the trailing robes and the papers of the wizards on the portal. They scrambled back, and the Auror Harry recognized from his training moved slowly towards him, eyes fixed on Harry’s face as if he thought that would keep him distracted.  
  
“You must realize that we can’t let you go now,” he said.  
  
Harry smiled at him, open-mouthed and panting like a dog. “And why not?” he asked. “Why the fuck not? I’ll be in another world in a minute, someone else’s problem. And you might note that I didn’t actually hurt anyone.”  
  
“Property damage,” said the Auror, but he hesitated visibly before his lips moved. Harry smiled again and spread his hands. Winds uncoiled from his fingers and wrapped themselves in leaves and grasses, visible now to their potential victims. The Auror stepped backwards, drawing his wand.  
  
“I’m going to be someone else’s problem,” Harry said gently. “And I’ve never got out of control in the last few years except when someone threatened me.” He felt Ron shift his weight, and Hermione turn her wand on a few people who were trying to drift nearer around the sides, unnoticed. “Go away now, and you don’t have to deal with this, and someone else will probably get blamed for the harm I did.”  
  
The Auror’s mouth tightened, and Harry was sure that it went against his training to let someone escape, no matter how minor their crime. But there was the wind waiting for him, and three adult wizards armed with wands, and a child who was shrieking with excitement and changing his hair to so many different colors that Harry wouldn’t have blamed someone for being blinded.  
  
The Auror stepped back again, and signaled to some of the other wizards creeping up on Harry and his friends. Two of them stopped. The others kept coming.  
  
Harry jerked his head at Hermione and Ron. “Get through the portal,” he said, and handed Teddy to Hermione, while the air around him heated like boiling water.  
  
“Harry—”  
  
He glanced at Ron, and Ron fell silent, his face whitening. Harry nodded once, and watched as Hermione and Ron hurried away, ducking their heads beneath the upper edge of the portal the same way Malfoy had. At least Ron had a reason; he’d grown to more than two meters. Harry heard Teddy give an unhappy wail, but he’d join him in a moment.  
  
Curses stabbed towards him the moment Teddy vanished. At least some of the Aurors had hesitated because a child was there and not because they feared the way that Harry would react, then.  
  
Harry interlaced his fingers and closed his eyes. The visible winds snarled in front of him, and he envisioned what he wanted them to do, holding them in tension for a moment, doing nothing harder than altering the air the Aurors’ curses flew through to deflect them.  
  
Then he let the winds go.  
  
They whistled and howled through the portal camp, snatching emigration forms and shredding them, tossing robes over Aurors’ heads, grabbing wands and hurling them into trees. Harry saw tents and desks lifting off the ground and families running to shelter, and smiled. He was the only one who knew that the winds would only hurt inanimate objects, not people.  
  
He turned and jumped through the portal.  
  
For a moment, he fell through green light that burned and froze him by turns. He wrapped a protective mantle of air around his body, but that didn’t seem to help. The magic he had to work with was as alien, in the transition between worlds, as the light itself.  
  
And then he was lying gasping on a plain of golden grass, with Teddy crying and running to embrace him, and glimpses of the other Weasleys and Malfoy, beneath a storm-blue sky.


	3. Beneath a Storm-Blue Sky

Hurricane was beautiful.  
  
Harry thought that continually during that first day as they spread and scattered across their new world, most of the wizards that he didn’t know traveling out of sight. If they were scared of him, that was fine. Harry didn’t expect to see them again unless they really wanted his help.  
  
They had come into the middle of a golden plain, the grass rising to the height of their shoulders and then spreading away in endless ripples, clothing hills that rolled gently and blurred on the edge of sight. There was little shelter here, and Molly led them, the first night, to higher hills with darker grass that straddled the line between red and orange. They huddled there as the wind danced around them, their wizardspace tents firmly fixed to the ground. According to the information the first Unspeakables through the gate had learned, Hurricane was in the middle of its long spring. They didn’t need to fear snow.  
  
But they needed to fear the wind. And the wind was the lord of the plains.  
  
Harry had assumed they would sleep through the first night, worn out by the walking and the excitement, and it seemed that Teddy and Victoire intended to. But the howling shriek that traveled from one end of the sky to the other tore him, Ron, and Hermione out of their exhaustion somewhere in the middle of the night. Harry sat up, answering Hermione’s quiet questions and Andromeda’s sleepy murmur with a shrug, and then lifted the flap of the tent.  
  
He thought for a moment he was looking out on a black ocean. The plains, which had looked spiky and rippling even after blue-black night fell, now seemed flat.  
  
Then he understood. All the grass was pressed down by the wind storming over it, and when he moved a few steps away from the tent and the protective charms wrapped around it, the wind came and stormed over  _him_.  
  
Harry coughed, unable to breathe, too much air assaulting his lungs at once. He felt his feet leave the ground, and the gale curled around him, as though it would hold him and protect him from anything he might encounter in his wild flight across the sky—until it smashed him against a hill or mountain.  
  
He pictured the flat plain for a moment, even as his lungs labored and his hands flailed, and he thought of how far he might fly before he crashed, how far the wind had to fly, unhindered.  
  
Then he remembered who and what he was, and reached out with his magic and called the wind to him.  
  
The storm resisted, slipping through his fingers like handfuls of glassy water, and Harry called up the magic that roared in him and flung it into the teeth of the air.   
  
For a moment, he felt as though he stood at the edge of a perfectly balanced mountain, as if he could feel the dirt slipping away beneath his feet and the stone striving to hold him up at the same time. Then the storm altered its tone around him, singing back to the power that he threw at it instead of fighting with it, and Harry landed gently back on the ground, in the middle of the tiny, slender mounds of bowed grass.  
  
His own winds wrapped him, cocooned him, and beyond them was the storm, so fast and so fleet that Harry knew he could never catch it. He could only make it listen to him, a little, and that might be enough to keep them safe, to retrieve anyone caught in the gale, to make their houses safe when they got around to building them. This was not a  _tame_ world. Harry could feel the wildness of the magic that danced around him, with the whole of this planet for its running ground.  
  
But it might be negotiated with. Taught to dance with them, instead of opposed to them. There was no hostility to the magic, either, the way Harry had sometimes felt when he pushed against the power of Dark artifacts.   
  
This was a new world.  
  
Harry knew his friends would be worried about him, and that he should really go back to the tents as soon as possible. But he stood there a few minutes anyway, or what would be minutes by the clocks of the wizarding world, his eyes shut as he breathed in the clean, cool air that quickened as it was ripped away from his lips.  
  
When he opened his eyes, he saw something pale in the darkness in front of him. And he went towards it, walking, his body floating as though Hurricane had no gravity, suspended by the contention between his magic and the storm’s.  
  
Malfoy lay on the ground, cradled in the unintentional hollow at the foot of one of the tiny hills. Harry bent over him, placing his fingers gently at the base of his throat, feeling for a pulse.  
  
*  
  
He hadn’t been prepared at all. He had heard about the storms that covered Hurricane, but he had also thought that protective charms to anchor him to the ground would be enough, since this was a world where magic worked. He lay down near the foot of the same hills that he had seen Potter and company reach earlier that day (another charm had allowed him to track them across the endless plains). He didn’t have a tent, but if the main threat was the wind and not rain, then an Impervious Charm wrapped around him should do.  
  
Draco only knew his mistake when he opened his eyes and found himself hanging dozens of meters above the earth.  
  
He flailed his arms and legs as though he was swimming, which helped not at all. He struck out with his wand, and the charms seemed to slide off the wind like water. He tried to hold his breath and cast a spell that would tell him which direction the wind was, and it simply vanished and melted away from him. And then the wind had nearly stolen the wand from his hand. Draco had to cuddle it against his chest. If he lost that, he was worse than dead.  
  
He didn’t remember hitting the ground, but his muscles remembered for him, and Draco groaned as all of them tried to tell him so at once. When he would have sat up, though, there were cool fingers on his throat and a voice murmuring to him to lie still. Draco reached for his wand with his left hand, the one tucked out of sight. He could still take on any attacker, and he seemed to have found, by sheerest accident, a place that was sheltered enough from the storm to let the magic work.  
  
“Hush,” the voice said, more familiar now that the tones were angrier, and a bright light glowed in front of him, a  _Lumos_ like a flame. Draco stared. Potter was kneeling next to him, his wand lighting his face, flat and still with anger. “I’m trying to save your life, you prick.” He bent down and moved his wand over Draco’s body, murmuring what sounded like diagnostic charms.  
  
Draco blinked. He wondered for a moment if the charms were a blind and Potter meant to kill him, but he could have left Draco here to die of any injuries he’d sustained if that was the case. And he had probably learned the relevant charms taking care of Teddy.  
  
“What happened?” he whispered. “Are we back in your tent? Did you move me?” He looked around, trying to ignore the burning sensation in his left leg and the one creeping up the center of his chest, but he saw no pale and welcome walls of a tent, only the blue-black forever.  
  
“No, we’re in a shelter I created from the wind,” Potter said, and his voice was abstracted. “Look, Malfoy, you have a fracture in your leg and internal damage. I can heal you, but it’ll mean letting my magic run directly through your body. Do you want to do that, or would you rather that I transport you back to our camp and let Angelina do what she can? She’s a trained Healer, but she doesn’t have access to all the Potions ingredients she would in the wizarding world.”  
  
Draco blinked, and swallowed. Then he said, “How in the world can  _you_ heal internal damage, Potter?” His voice seemed thick and slow. His head spun, and he had to lay it down on the marvelously flat ground.  
  
“My magic does what I ask it to do,” Potter said, and leaned back and looked him in the eye. “As long as it’s sufficiently grand. It doesn’t like to do small things, like Cleaning Charms. What do you think, Malfoy? It’s your choice.”  
  
Draco closed his eyes. He swallowed. He was starting to feel so much pain now that he wondered how Potter could ask him to make a coherent or important decision. He wondered if it was shock that had preserved him so far, and the pain soared again, and he decided that he didn’t have the time to worry about that.  
  
“You’re going to hurt me?” he whispered.  
  
“As far as it’s possible, no,” Potter said. His voice sounded more distant now, and bubbling on the other side of an underwater wall. “But I’d have to hurt you to move you, I think. I could float you, but I don’t know whether that would increase the internal damage. I could hold the leg steady as I went, but—”  
  
“Get on with it,” Draco snarled, and turned his head to the side and closed his eyes. He didn’t know if he was going to live. He didn’t know what was going to happen next. He didn’t know whether Potter might be the death of him after all.  
  
But he had come here for reasons other than the ones he had told Potter, and if he died here…well, he might as well die here as have stayed in the wizarding world.  
  
*  
  
When Malfoy gave him permission, Harry didn’t wait. He closed his eyes and reached for the feeling of power in himself, the ability that told him he  _could_ do this, and which he hoped he had cause to trust where Malfoy was concerned.  
  
The air in front of him and around him bucked. Then it twitched. Then it sighed, and collapsed. Harry kept his eyes closed, his hands moving around him, driving it forwards. It whipped away from him, and in, and through, and down.  
  
He felt Malfoy gasp. The magic was traveling through him thanks to the air he breathed, which Harry was best at manipulating. He still kept his eyes shut, though, because the magic would obey him implicitly, and if he was hurting Malfoy, then he could end this experiment at once.  
  
 _Not really an experiment,_ whispered the memories at the back of his mind that had been another reason for emigrating.  
  
Harry did his best to ignore the whisper. He didn’t want to think about the mistake he had made, healing someone who had then turned on him. But at least it meant that he had the experience to know that healing Malfoy was not  _utterly_ impossible.  
  
The air twitched again, and then it began to swirl through Malfoy’s body, oxygen blending with his blood, driving his heart, making his lungs pump. This was the part that Harry didn’t understand as well, and he simply had to keep his eyes closed and concentrate on what he wanted done, rather than the mechanics of it. His hands continued to move, his brain continued to work.  
  
And then he felt the pain dissolve, the blood concentrating around Malfoy’s internal wounds, stopping the interior bleeding, at least. Harry didn’t think he could heal the damage to the organs right away, but he could encourage the healing functions of the body with more air, stronger, purer, delivered faster than it could be with Malfoy merely breathing, and he did that, and he did that, until his body strained and he knew that he had to let the magic go or damage his brain.  
  
He opened his eyes. Malfoy lay in front of him, still breathing, and with fewer marks of pain on his face. Harry nodded, and then turned and stabilized the leg. That, he really didn’t think he could do anything about, except ensure that Malfoy floated instead of dragged until they reached Angelina.  
  
“Potter,” Malfoy whispered.  
  
“Yes?” Harry bent down. There was the possibility that he had caused more pain than he had relieved, no matter what his intentions, and he wanted to hear from Malfoy if that was the case.  
  
“What did you  _do_?”  
  
Harry smiled a little. “Made the air flow faster through your body. It worked better this time,” he added thoughtfully. He was thinking of the reports he had read on Hurricane, the ones that the initial Unspeakables sent through the portals had brought back, and something he had thought was there but no one else had seen. Well, at least no one else that Harry had spoken with. Perhaps he wasn’t wrong after all, perhaps it existed.  
  
“And all that—it feels better,” Malfoy muttered. He tried to move, and gasped aloud. “Not my leg, though.”  
  
Harry nodded. “I thought about trying to blow the pieces of the bone back together, which I think I could do, but I would have nothing to hold them. Unless I set up a little whirlwind, and, well, I’m not ready for that level of control.” He yawned. He thought he would have a hard time simply holding the patch of motionless air clear around them as they walked, or floated, back to his family. The wandless magic  _did_ take a toll on him, something Hermione thought he should pay more attention to.  
  
“I think that I wouldn’t want that,” Malfoy said, and his voice pierced and cut through the fog that had started to envelop Harry’s mind. “A whirlwind  _inside_ my leg?”  
  
“Inside the blood and bone, yes,” Harry said, and blinked, and managed to come back to himself a little. “I hope that you won’t mind flying on the wind a little.” He had decided that was a better alternative to walking and holding the wind out. Let it bear them, as long as his magic could convince the storms of Hurricane to behave and be gentle.  
  
Malfoy was silent. Harry nodded and reached out, ripping the space around them and calling to the winds sweeping and flooding around and beyond that.  
  
The air came down and picked them up. Harry didn’t experience the intense exhilaration he had before; he was just too tired. He leaned his head on the wind as he would on a pillow and shut his eyes. He knew that Malfoy was just beyond him, stretched flat across the air in the best position to accommodate his leg. Although Harry listened with the edges of his magic, he couldn’t sense Malfoy’s bleeding starting again. He grunted in satisfaction, his breathing smoothing out.  
  
He would wake when they landed. In the meantime, a precious moment of snatched sleep was not to be disdained. It would make his magic stronger later when he needed to use it to protect someone else.  
  
*  
  
Draco didn’t know how he could be sure, with the sounds of the storm around them as they were carried rapidly back in the direction of the mountains, but he thought Potter was snoring in his sleep.  
  
Yes, his  _sleep._ Potter was the only wizard Draco knew who would go to sleep in the middle of being carried across leagues of plain by a magical wind that Draco could feel the power in. There was magic here and to spare, slopping around in random directions, spinning out in the storms. Draco was sure that was the reason the storms were so powerful and so frequent. Either let out the magic somehow, or it would build up and make the world uninhabitable, even for the grasses and the rare bounding creatures that were the only living things Draco had seen so far.  
  
Draco flexed his fingers as his thoughts began to move again. His leg was held immobile, and as comfortable as it could be without full healing. He felt nothing of the intense pain that he had before, either, when it came to the smashed internal organs he had endured in his chest.  
  
The wild magic loose and roving in this world meant something. Of course, it had meant that the wizards who had explored this world had reported it as dangerous, and  _that_ meant fewer immigrants would come to Hurricane. But in and between and around that, there was something else, something more.  
  
Draco thought few people would probably pick up on it, because their fathers hadn’t made them read ancient magical theorists when they were young. But he could feel the interest prickling and sliding through him, and it was certainly more than intense enough to return to him now, when he had nothing else to do.  
  
Wild magic sloshing around people changed them. Sometimes it changed the nature of spells that could be performed; some people thought that was why Hogwarts had been established, to create a place where magic would be tamer, under human control, and spells could be standardized. As Hogwarts-trained wizards spread across Britain, they could make their houses and villages places of the same kind, and wild magic had diminished.  
  
But for individuals bathed in the full rush of it…  
  
Why were there no more wizards like Merlin? Lucius Malfoy had asked, digging through books and asking the questions aloud so that his young son could share in them, too. Why were powerful wizards like the Dark Lord and Dumbledore so rare now, when once common wizards had performed wonders? It was not lost knowledge. Since Hogwarts and the time of the Founders, knowledge was better-preserved and passed-on than ever before. And there were plenty of wizards who would be interested in keeping the knowledge alive for themselves even if they never shared it.  
  
No, Lucius Malfoy had believed, that had to do with the decline of the wild magic. When it was rushing around the world, it could be tapped by any wizard, just as plants tapped water and sunlight, to grow in strength.  
  
He had even theorized, in the last feverish days before they took him to Azkaban and he was trying to find  _some_ explanation for the failure of their side in the war, that the destruction of the warded home at Godric’s Hollow had left the wild magic to descend on the infant Harry Potter, and that was one reason he had been strong enough to stand up to the Dark Lord and defeat him. And his mother’s sacrifice, of course, but there must be some other way he had survived a basilisk, the Dark Lord in the graveyard, the Cruciatus Curse with his mind intact.  
  
Draco turned now, as much as he could with the wind pulling his hair, and stared at the motionless Potter in front of him, lying there with his head flat as though on a bed and his nostrils fluttering with his snores. Yes, Draco  _knew_ he was snoring, even if he couldn’t hear him.  
  
Perhaps Potter’s case was special, then. Perhaps he had lived outside domesticated wizarding spaces for long enough that he had grown his own wild magic, although Draco didn’t think  _that_ much of it could be found in the sterile Muggle environment where Potter had spent the majority of his life.  
  
But here, on Hurricane, in a world where wind dashed back and forth and blew against the skin of everyone, where the air filled their lungs, where every breath had the potential to turn wild…  
  
Perhaps all of them could have what Potter had.  
  
It was a satisfaction, to think that.  
  
*  
  
“That was stupid, Harry.”  
  
Harry serenely ignored the shame that he knew Hermione wanted him to feel, and turned to Angelina, who had kneeled over Malfoy the minute Harry woke her up and was frowning down at his leg. “Can you heal him?”  
  
“They taught me spells for simple fractures like this,” Angelina said, and smiled up at him. “I’d use the Skele-Gro, but I think we should save that for the more serious breaks that we’re going to have in the future.”  
  
Harry nodded his consent back, and then turned and motioned to Hermione. Mostly by default, she and he were the leaders. They were the ones who had organized their friends and family to emigrate, so they were the ones who had to answer the hard questions and come up with solutions to problems that no one else had even imagined. Hermione had brought seeds for Potions ingredients that would be difficult or impossible to get in Hurricane, which wasn’t something that would have occurred to Harry.  
  
But he could read people better than she could, at least since the war, and he knew he would win the argument he reckoned, by the stubborn set of her shoulders, that they were due to have.  
  
She led him a good distance from the tents before she turned around and frowned at him. He knew that Teddy and Victoire had sometimes overheard their rows in the past, and ever since he’d told that to Hermione, she was as eager as he was to keep knowledge of them from the children if at all possible.  
  
“We can’t waste valuable time and ingredients on him,” Hermione said softly.  
  
“Why? Because he’s not a Weasley?” Harry folded his arms and examined her in a leisurely way. “Neither am I. Neither is Andromeda or Angelina. Or Teddy. That’s a stupid argument, if it’s the one you’re going to make.”  
  
“You’re jumping to conclusions again,” Hermione said, and rubbed at her face. “No. What I meant is that he won’t thank us for it, and he won’t repay us with labor in any way. He won’t help us plant crops or raise houses or learn the magic of this world. Why would he? He thinks we’re useless.”  
  
Harry paused and blinked. That was actually a good argument, and one he could respect. And Hermione was right. They would struggle to survive here, no matter how well-prepared they thought they were. They couldn’t spare time for a layabout. Andromeda, who had mourned herself almost to death in the first year since the war, was better now, but Harry had warned her she would need to contribute to their efforts in Hurricane, if only by watching Teddy and Victoire while the others did more active work.  
  
But he didn’t have that feeling about Malfoy. If nothing else, Malfoy understood debts and prices, and he would know that ingratitude wouldn’t get him closer to his aunt and cousin.  
  
“I think that he’ll thank us for this,” Harry said at last, after closing his eyes and standing there with the distant echo of the wind on his face while he thought. The windstorm had died down as quickly as it had arisen. The initial explorers in this world had named Hurricane for the changeability of its weather as much as its violence. “Because he knows that he would have died tonight if not for me. And he’ll want to stay close to us because he probably can’t survive on his own. If he wants to take advantage of what we’ll build, he’ll need to contribute to it.”  
  
Hermione folded her arms, and then dropped them and sighed. “You’ve already decided that he’s staying, haven’t you?”  
  
Harry smiled at her. “I saved his life. That gives me a certain bond with someone, Hermione. Don’t worry, he’ll never challenge the way I feel about you and Ron. But I  _do_ feel that I owe him something.”  
  
“He won’t thank you for that part, either,” Hermione muttered, but she hesitated. “If you feel that we can trust him.”  
  
“To the limited extent that his self-interest takes him,” Harry said. “And I never thought Malfoy was stupid. Just short-sighed and vengeful. That combination can make someone  _seem_ stupid. Well, he has to have overcome some of those handicaps if he planned his own emigration.”  
  
“He wasn’t prepared tonight,” Hermione muttered.  
  
“It was only chance that we were,” Harry said quietly. “We’ll need to have sturdier shelters before the wind comes again. I only survived because my magic is akin to the wind.” He turned his head up to the sky, wondering when he could seek it again, and feel the magic shouting out to his blood in greeting.  
  
“Just be careful, Harry,” Hermione said. “And you’ll probably be the one who needs to deal with him, since the rest won’t want to, except maybe Andromeda.” She paused as she started to turn back. “Why  _did_ you save him?”  
  
Harry stared at her. “What kind of question is that?”  
  
Hermione smiled a little and walked away. Harry followed her, shaking his head.  _She_ was the one who ought to understand his motives in rescuing Malfoy if anyone did. She was always telling him since the war that he was in danger of sinking down into himself and his devotion to Teddy and not caring about anyone else.  
  
But Malfoy had the potential to be important to Teddy. And Harry didn’t want to leave someone to perish on the wind when he could protect them. That was the way it was.   
  
 _None of which means that Malfoy isn’t going to be a pain in the arse._


	4. Building the First

Harry closed his eyes and turned to the right, pointing with both hands and then crossing them over. The clods of earth he was directing with the waves of air his wandless magic could lift  _should_ obey his directions—  
  
“Ouch!”  
  
Harry snapped his eyes open at once. Teddy had run into the building area, probably aiming to hug him, and the bottom of one of the huge dirt bricks had brushed his head. Now he stared up, rubbing the wound with his mouth open as though he didn’t understand what kept the cut earth afloat all by itself.  
  
Harry made sure that he didn’t drop the blocks of earth as he hastened to Teddy. No sense in causing an accident and setting back their building schedule just because he was concerned about his godson. “No bump?” he asked gently, and lifted Teddy’s hair away from the back of his head, letting his fingers probe.  
  
“Bump!” Teddy said, and giggled, but from what Harry could tell, he was only imitating the word, not getting upset. He held out his arms, and Harry swept him up and snuggled him on his hip. Teddy turned his hair black and shaggy and his eyes bright green in response, and leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder.  
  
“Potter.”  
  
Harry turned his head. The others had left him in charge of this section of the building, since his wandless magic would let him work alone more efficiently than with partners. And he was apparently in charge of dealing with Malfoy, too, given how all the others avoided him. Harry stifled a sigh—Malfoy was no more interruption than Teddy was—and nodded to him. “Teddy,” he said to the little boy currently staring at the bricks and trying to turn his hair the golden color of the grass, “this is your cousin, Draco Malfoy.”  
  
*  
  
Draco paused between one step and another, though he thought he recovered before anyone else could notice. Then he made sure to place his feet more delicately and more precisely as he walked towards Harry and his little cousin.  
  
But—he hadn’t thought of introducing himself to Teddy when he came over. And he hadn’t thought Potter would think that was what he was doing, either. He had come to discuss the life-debts he owed Potter, and he assumed that Potter’s mind would naturally go to the same place. What else could they have in common?  
  
It was true, though, that Draco wanted a family, wanted to get to know his only remaining relatives. It wasn’t his only reason for emigrating, but it was one of the greatest. He was the only Malfoy left, but not the only one with his blood left. And all his life, his parents had raised him to know the importance of blood, in many senses of the word.  
  
He knelt down and held out his hand. He had already decided that Potter babied Teddy enough; he would greet him the same way he would an adult. “Hello, Teddy,” he said. “My name is Draco Malfoy. My mother is your grandmother’s sister.”  
  
Teddy, placed on the ground near Potter’s feet, just stared at him doubtfully, one finger tucked in a corner of his mouth. Draco, who found that habit disgusting, nevertheless made sure his face was smooth and clear. They could discuss it later.  
  
At last Teddy moved closer and said, “You know Grandma?”  
  
Draco hesitated, then said, “I know about her. I don’t really know her.” He looked up at Potter, but he had his arms folded and his face so neutral that Draco bit his lip in response. He didn’t know whether he was doing well or poorly with Teddy. He thought Potter would intervene only if he actually hurt Teddy. Otherwise, he would let them get to know each other and hold himself aloof.  
  
A squirm of emotion wormed through Draco at that.  _Isn’t that just like him? Holding himself back, always too good to get involved with a Malfoy?_  
  
But he was here for his cousin and not Potter, so he turned back when Teddy said, “Aunt Hermione. You know Aunt Hermione? Uncle Ron?” His hair changed color constantly as he talked, one minute brown and frizzy like Granger’s, the next moment red and limp like Weasel’s.  
  
Draco was grateful for the neutral mask, now. He said, “I know them.”  
  
Teddy giggled with delight, apparently reassured that someone wasn’t a stranger to people he knew, and then rushed forwards and grabbed Draco in a hug so sudden that Draco gasped at him before he reached out and hesitantly curled his arms around Teddy in return.  
  
It was like holding a living bundle of short attention span. Teddy wriggled and leaped backwards, and said, “Go see water!”  
  
Draco glanced at Potter. Potter said, “There’s a little stream coming down over there.” He gestured to the side of the nearest mountain—as Draco was learning to think of them, though in the wizarding world they would merely have been high hills. “I think Teddy wants to play in it, or see the fish we think are in it. It seems to be normal water, without danger.” He gave Draco a polite smile that did nothing to conceal the icy warning in his eyes, and turned away to gesture at the sod bricks he was raising. At once, they curved and danced, and Potter began to set them atop each other, framing a shallow hole that his winds had already scraped in the earth.  
  
Draco continued to stare at his back, but Teddy tugged hard on his hand and said, “Go see  _water!_  Draco?” he added, as though afraid that Draco wouldn’t want to come along, or simply unsure of his name.  
  
Draco faced him and smiled again. “That sounds like an excellent plan,” he said, and set off, though he quickly found that he had to adjust his pace to the small, bumbling strides of Teddy’s legs. Sometimes he jumped, sometimes he leaped, sometimes he stumbled against Draco, and sometimes he tottered in a way that suggested even the mostly flat ground of Hurricane would trip him up.  
  
 _Well, of course he does. He’s two._  
  
Draco thought about that, and about the fact that he would be part of Teddy’s life from now on, and he would never remember a time when he hadn’t known his older cousin.  
  
There was an immense amount of satisfaction in the middle of his belly when he thought about that, spreading out, thicker and deeper than the dark blue pool that Teddy showed him proudly a few minutes later.  
  
*  
  
One of his winds connected Harry to Teddy and Malfoy, bringing back scraps of their conversation and Teddy’s lively chatter. As long as it stayed lively and without obvious distress, then Malfoy could be with him, Harry had decided. The minute that altered, the air would snatch Teddy away and bear him back.  
  
And yet, Harry thought that most of his distrust of Malfoy came from old habit. Malfoy didn’t seem the type to try to hurt a child, and as Harry had told Hermione a few nights ago, before Angelina’s healing spells had taken hold and Malfoy had recovered from the fracture in his leg, Malfoy wasn’t stupid. He  _must_ know that Harry would keep him away from Teddy forever if he tried something.  
  
So Harry kept most of his attention on the bricks that he needed to pile, and not much on Malfoy and Teddy. It was weirdly freeing.  
  
He concentrated on raising the house that Hermione and Arthur, who had spent a lot of the last year studying various Muggle ways of building, had decided would be best. The dwellings had to be partially underground, in order to escape the force of the wind, and so far they had no wood or stone to build with, only earth. Magic was their greatest advantage, and of course the houses would have Sticking Charms and wards wound into them from the beginning, so that they wouldn’t be carried away by the storms or breached easily.  
  
But that still didn’t mean that Harry knew the best way to put the squares of earth together the first time he built one.  
  
He cocked his head to the side, trying to approach the problem from what was literally a new angle. If he looked at it like  _this,_ could he see where he should put windows? Or would windows be a stupid luxury, and instead they should just light the inside of the house with fire and  _Lumos_?  
  
 _If we can find anything to burn. Pure_ Incendio  _on the air itself would get tiring after a while._  
  
Windows it was. Harry lifted his hand again, and the bricks of earth dipped and dived and swooped like hawks heading home to roost. For a moment, the air around him seemed to vibrate, and he could feel the magic pouring through him. He had opened the source of it, he thought vaguely, and while it came in answer to his call, it wouldn’t always do that, and he shouldn’t get used to it.  
  
He would have to rest, just as Hermione said. Harry grimaced at the thought of that, but they were in a world where they had to conserve their resources now, and if he had to rest to be there for Teddy, then he would.  
  
Faster and faster the bricks piled up, and then Harry’s magic whirled and dug, shaped whirlwinds, into the earth and grass of the plains, working loose more solid blocks of it. Harry had watched George and Ron working on it the past few days, and he knew how to do it now. He closed his eyes and poured more and more into the magic, knowing it meant that he would have to rest all the more quickly. But the more he did now, the less the others had to do later. They could work with bricks more easily than they could cut them.  
  
A cry from behind him snapped his head around, but the winds continued digging. He ran towards Teddy and Malfoy, remorse curling and burning in his muscles. He never should have left them alone, he never—  
  
But he slid to a halt on the bank of the fragile pool as he figured out what they were doing.  
  
*  
  
“I  _told_ you!” Teddy said, in the tones of someone who’d heard that phrase often, and held his hand up. Draco stared at the squirming silver thing in it, which had seven legs, evenly placed all around the body, and a single head. He shook his own head. It was ugly, and it was fascinating, and he couldn’t have caught it.  
  
“How did you see it?” he asked, staring down into the stream again. There were darting shadows there, but they were all the blue and silver and grey of the dancing water itself, and he couldn’t imagine how Teddy had managed to tell which one of them was alive.  
  
“I saw it,” Teddy said. His voice was dry; Draco mentally labeled that his “stupid adults” tone. He looked down and snatched another one. Draco wondered for a moment whether his cousin’s quickness was part of his werewolf heritage, and then decided carefully that he was never going to voice that question where Potter could hear it. “’Nother one!” Teddy said, and displayed the second thing. It was deep blue, but otherwise like the first.  
  
A shadow flickered in the corner of Draco’s eye, rather than down in the water. He looked up with a smile, and found Potter standing on the far bank of the stream, staring at them, head bowed as if he was trying to figure out whether he should charge them now or later.  
  
Draco stared back, then understood. Teddy had shrieked in delight when he caught the first thing; Potter must have mistaken it for a different kind of scream. He held his hands so Potter could make out the creatures Teddy had caught. “We were fishing,” he said, and found that his voice had descended to low and soothing. One didn’t challenge someone with magic like Potter’s.  
  
Potter flicked his fringe out of his eyes and moved a cautious, crouching step forwards, until he was across the pool from Teddy, but not Draco. “You’re having fun, Teddy?” he asked. Draco scowled as he realized how careful Potter was to keep his focus on Teddy alone. _As though I’m not worthy of his attention._  
  
“Yes!” Teddy said, and bounced up and down, and then jumped straight into the water before Draco could stop him.  
  
Potter snapped his hand out and made a hooking motion, and Teddy rose out of the water with a third thing in his hands, this one gasping and flailing in the air the way a fish would. Draco thought he could make out a delicate row of gills opening and closing down its rosy-gold sides, and also that he was going to  _murder_ Teddy the next time he got to be alone with him.  
  
Another part of him, more occupied with magical theory, wondered if Potter even realized how easy it was for him to use wandless magic, and how he had turned to that before his wand, despite telling Draco that he used his wand for all the small charms.  
  
“ _Don’t_ do that again,” Potter said, voice low and almost as soothing as the one Draco had used to him on the surface, but Teddy flushed and looked down, staring intently at the creature in his hand.  
  
“Didn’t mean to,” he whispered. “Sorry, Harry.”  
  
 _Potter doesn’t encourage him to call him by a title of respect?_ Draco wondered, and then answered his own question with a roll of his eyes.  _Of course not. This is Potter that we’re talking about._  
  
“As long as you’re fine,” Potter said, and used the wind blowing from him to set Teddy back on the bank next to Draco. For a moment, his gaze passed over Draco and seemed to scrape him to the bone, as if Draco was one of the water creatures that he wanted to gut.  
  
And then he nodded and turned around, walking away. Leaving Teddy to Draco’s care.  
  
Teddy immediately began chattering and asking Draco what he should name his water-creatures, but Draco couldn’t pay attention as quickly. His eyes stayed fixed on the retreating figure of Potter, who, the gossips in the Ministry had told him, cared more about protecting his godson than anything in the world.  
  
Which must mean, on some level, that he  _trusted_ Draco.  
  
And that was worth more than a moment of attention, or even than some of the knowledge on Potter he’d managed to scrape up.  
  
With a shake of his head, he turned back towards Teddy and the questions he was asking, questions that Draco could at least find the answers to even if he wasn’t particularly interested in the answers. This was all part of the process of getting to know his cousin.  
  
*  
  
“It’s a good first effort, I think,” Ron said, bending down so that he could look through the entrance of the house Harry had half-raised. He was sweating, and there were long streaks running down his arms and face that said he’d been doing it all day. Harry half-smiled at the ragged strip of red beard along his jaw. He thought Hermione would probably make Ron trim that off soon. “But we have to see how one stands up to the wind before we know if this is a good idea at all or a mad dream.”  
  
“It’s a good idea to live underground,” said Angelina mildly, glancing up from beside the fire where George was supervising the cooking of some chicken. Both the chicken and the fuel for the fire had come from the wizarding world. Harry could see the way Hermione’s eyes watched both, and knew she had similar thoughts to his own running through her mind. A lot would depend on how soon they could plant, and what they could find on Hurricane, and whether it was safe to eat. “I don’t know how far the houses have to rise beyond that, though. It just seems like it would be an extra target for the wind to reach.”  
  
“But wouldn’t it be  _depressing_ to live inside a house that was basically a cave all the time?” Ron demanded, dropping down beside her. “I want a high ceiling!”  
  
“So do I,” Angelina said, absently slapping George’s hand away from a small bottle he’d been about to tip over the chicken, “but not at the price of having my roof blown away from over my head.”  
  
Ron replied in the tones that told Harry they were going to have another of their mild rows, and Harry smiled and stepped away from the fire. Teddy had gone to sleep at the beginning of sunset, and Andromeda was watching over him. That left Harry to wander off into the plains, under that spectacular sky, and watch for signs of the next approaching storm, which it would be nice to have some way to predict.  
  
The sunset never seemed to end, the same way the sky didn’t. The Unspeakables who’d investigated Hurricane said that the day didn’t seem to be as long as on Earth, but the dawn and the sunset lingered longer, and gave so much light that they hadn’t suffered any loss of working time. That was going to be important, Harry thought. All sorts of things he hadn’t thought about before were going to be important.  
  
Right now, Hurricane’s sky had mostly turned a deeper shade of blue, with red and gold creeping along the edges like serpents around the edges of a tapestry Harry had seen hanging in the office of a Ministry official he’d had to bribe. He tilted his head back and further back, trying uselessly to see the whole expanse. Tilting it further, he halted on the middle of a small hillock from which he could still see the light of the fire. The last thing they needed was someone getting lost on those vast plains.  
  
He had just sat down and lifted his head to try and catch the first of the appearing stars when something swept across them.  
  
Harry leaped to his feet, mouth open to cry out that a storm was coming—and then stared. No cloud, he thought numbly, could move that fast, even on Hurricane.  
  
They had wondered where the animals were, and mostly agreed with the first explorers that they were either rare, bounding, fleeting things that were difficult to get a glimpse of, or nonexistent due to the wild magic. But they hadn’t looked  _above._ And they should have.  
  
It made sense, after all, that in a world where wild magic spiraled through the storms, some things might have evolved to use those storms.  
  
Flying above Harry was the most enormous bird he had ever seen, wings dappled black and glowing against the sunset behind it, though with pale patches towards the ends that told Harry the great flight feathers were probably white. He could see the folded-back, hooked feet, and the curved beak, and he swallowed. Of course it ate meat. A  _thing_ that big wouldn’t get by on grass-seed, even if grasses covered the planet from horizon to horizon.  
  
The others had seen it now, and they were shouting. The bird craned its head down at the end of a neck that looked a mile long, and then it began to beat its wings. Harry didn’t know whether it intended to land or merely to gain some more height.  
  
It didn’t matter. That wind would probably still put their fire out and scatter their careful hard work. Without thinking, Harry lifted his hands and spun a defense against it, tightly rotating blasts of air that formed a still dome several feet above his head. The beats of the bird’s wings met it and faded.  
  
The bird immediately oriented on him. It could sense magic, Harry thought. Of course it could. That would be an advantage on Hurricane. He wondered for a moment if it could sense storms coming, and if there was a way that they could learn how to do it from the creature—  
  
Then said creature hurtled down towards him.  
  
Harry could feel his defense bending and creaking. He was good, but this bird stooping at him was simply  _bigger,_ and besides the wind he had to worry about the foot stabbing towards him, the hard knuckles of the talon opening and the gleaming claws on the ends of them, one of which could spear straight through half his body. He gathered up the power in him, not sure what he would do yet, only that he had to do  _something._ He couldn’t let it kill him; he was Teddy’s protector, and one of the keys to their survival on Hurricane.  
  
He had just begun to raise more wind when something hit from the side, something huge and formless, a swelling tide like the one that Harry had felt inside him more than once when he summoned his magic.  
  
The bird screamed as the force struck one of the claws reaching for Harry and hacked it off, in a clean line that made Harry stare. The scream was what drove him to his knees, though, his head bowed and his arms tucked protectively around it. Above him, the bird swerved to the side, neck stretched down again. Harry smelled the carrion stench of its breathing, and then felt the downdraft as it leaped back to safety in the higher regions of the sky.  
  
As soon as he could convince his shaky legs to bear him, he stood up and turned around, looking for his savior.  
  
Malfoy stared back at him, standing near him with his hand still extended, fingers apparently gripped around the hilt of an invisible blade. He dropped his hand a moment later and swallowed, but Harry had noticed what he thought Malfoy would have wanted to keep secret. He had no wand in that hand.  
  
Harry smiled at him, and his mind seemed to explode into random beautiful fireworks. He came to Malfoy immediately and took his wrist, wringing it until Malfoy reluctantly opened the fist with which he’d hacked off the claw.  
  
“Thank you,” he told Malfoy, and if Malfoy didn’t believe him, then it wouldn’t be his fault. Harry was putting all the sincerity he could into his voice, all the sincerity he really felt. “You saved my life, and the debt you owed is paid, if it ever was owed.”  
  
“You’ve saved my life three times,” Malfoy said, through white lips. The others were coming over, but cautiously, as though they assumed that the magic that saved Harry’s life might have come from something unexplained. “I only saved yours once.”  
  
“But you have magic like mine,” Harry said, and laughed aloud. Malfoy started to jerk his hand back, but Harry gripped his arm and swung him in a circle, half-dancing. Malfoy gaped at him, and forgot to bristle. “ _Wandless_ magic. I don’t know everything you can do, yet, but you cut that bird’s claw off. And you didn’t have your wand. I  _saw_ you.”  
  
Malfoy shook his head. “I wanted it to stop, and I imagined cutting the claw. And then I flung my hand out, and that happened.”  
  
Harry nodded. “It’s probably the magic of Hurricane affecting you. It makes sense that huge storms of wild magic blowing back and forth would be bound to do something to the people caught in them. Not the Unspeakables, because they weren’t here long enough, and not me, because I already have it, but to other people.”  
  
*  
  
Draco wanted to tear his hand out of Potter’s again, but for a distinctly different reason this time. How  _dare_ Potter come up with that theory when Draco was just starting to explore it? And how  _dare_ he stand there smiling as the others came up, ensuring that his precious Weasleys heard it, too, and that it wasn’t Draco’s secret anymore?  
  
 _It was never your secret in the first place,_ said the bitter, knowing voice he had used to talk to himself since his father’s imprisonment.  _You know it wasn’t._  
  
Draco bit his lips and nodded. After all, once the wild magic began affecting other people, he never would have been able to keep it to himself, and he wouldn’t have been the only one affected.  
  
He didn’t understand the smile that Potter had greeted the knowledge with, though, and decided that it was his best course at the moment to ignore the presence of Weasels and say so. “Why are you happy that I have the power to—chop things off?” It was the best way he could describe the ugly result of his desire and will and magic mixing and charging out of him before he was ready. If he had been able to choose any form of wild magic to possess, it wouldn’t have been that one.  
  
“Because someone like you can be so useful,” Potter said, blinking at him. “You can help us do so much, and survive better.”  
  
 _It never occurs to him that I could do anything else._  
  
But why would it? They had left the institutions and the power struggles of the wizarding world far behind, and while anyone could travel through the portals, the number of journeys back was severely limited. Even if Draco found the portal again and attempted to return, there was no guarantee that he’d be able to.  
  
Potter was right. Survival was the most important need here, and he could do it in a way that he never could in the wizarding world.  
  
“You’re right,” he said, and moved closer to Potter, turning around to face the Weasels. More than half of them still looked at him with faint disgust, but Potter moved forwards to speak to them, and Draco had to admit that Granger and the remaining Weasel twin had the good sense to smile, at least.  
  
The old resentment had cooled like lava, but through it, from beneath it, thrust something else.  
  
 _I could belong here. I could_ make  _my place._  
  
 _If I wanted to._


	5. Breath of Life

I’m your responsibility now?” Draco could hear the incredulous crack in the middle of his voice, but Potter, bent over and measuring the distance between bricks in a newly-assembled sod house, didn’t seem to take much notice of it.  
  
“Looks like it.” Potter’s voice was distracted. He stepped back, studied the bricks again, and then shook his head. “I wish I knew more about building houses,” he muttered.  
  
“You didn’t study before you came here?” Draco stepped up beside Potter. If he was not the most convivial of company, neither had he proven himself  _intolerable_ since they came here, unlike most of the Weasleys still were to Draco. And there was a quiet, cool competence about Potter that Draco was learning to like. Even if he fumbled sometimes, as he was doing now with this house, it never seemed to stop him.  
  
Potter turned his head and smiled at him. “I studied what I could. But there were other things to think about, and no matter how long you look at a book, I don’t think you can become an expert at this kind of thing without experience.”  
  
Draco looked at the house in silence, and felt something sharp and foreign travel through him as he noticed the neat edges of the sod bricks. His wandless magic had cut those, chopping them free of the soil and leveling them into place. Potter had praised him with sparse words, which was more than the others had offered, but most of all, Draco liked the feeling that he was exercising  _power_ , and that for once it would have a solid result.  
  
The airy things his father talked about, the connections in the Ministry and the power of buried artifacts and secrets that he had traded back and forth for years, were nothing next to this, Draco thought. It was another reason he had chosen to come to Hurricane. In the wizarding world, he would have had few chances at real strength. The Malfoy name was too tainted, and he would forever be in the shadow of his father.  
  
But here…  
  
He might have had to fear being in the shadow of Potter, if he was still the boy Draco had known at school. But that wasn’t true anymore. Perhaps it never had been. And in this world, there was enough wild magic, and space, and freedom, for them all.  
  
“There!” Potter stepped back from the house and waved his hand. The bricks bounced a bit, then settled more firmly on top of each other. “There,” he repeated more gently. “I think that should take care of things.”  
  
Draco walked over to the house and ducked his head to peer inside.   
  
Of course it would never rival the grandeur of Malfoy Manor, but he had to admit it was more practical for a world swept by so much roaring wind. The interior was a neat half-oval in the ground, dug where Draco had chopped the earth up, and here and there were pierced holes for windows that Potter’s magic had dug away. The half-oval had been rounded at the bottom, and the Weasleys had contributed shelves of carved stone—it turned out that Fleur Delacour-Weasley had some skill in that, or at least knew the right spells for it—and chairs and tables sat in the near-darkness. Sticking Charms, Draco knew, would fasten them to the floor in more permanent positions once the walls were also stuck.  
  
“A bit dark,” he said.  
  
Potter flashed him an exhilarating grin and moved forwards to fiddle with some of the falling, crumbling dirt near the entrance. “We won’t spend much time inside it,” he said. “Hurricane is going to demand more and more and  _more_ of all of us, and most of that will be outside.”  
  
Draco pulled his head back and stared at him. “You’re  _looking forward_ to that, aren’t you,” he said at last, because he couldn’t think of another way to phrase it that wouldn’t sound mad. “You’re actually looking forward to fighting wild magic for the rest of your life.”  
  
“And taking care of Teddy,” Potter said, nodding, as though Draco had said a sane thing.  
  
Draco cocked is head again, thought, and then said, “But haven’t you thought about whether you might like to relax and rest? I know that you’re handling some of the heavy work that the Weasleys can’t, because of your magic.” He was proud of himself for remembering in time not to call them by the name that always echoed in his mind. “But later?”  
  
“There won’t be much relaxation,” Potter said, with a relish that made Draco wrinkle his nose. “Harvesting and hunting and fighting back against creatures like the bird you defeated are going to take almost all of our time.”  
  
Draco slouched against the house, trying to ignore the way that Potter’s words about the bird  _Draco_ had defeated made him glow. “But you still think that that’s the better way to live, instead of being able to relax,” he said.  
  
“It’s all right for some, I suppose,” Potter said, in the polite tones of someone talking about a new fad in fashion. “But I never lived that way, and now I don’t think I know how to live another way. Yes, I want another battle to fight. But one that actually leads to people  _living_ instead of scrambling over the broken pieces. This is the way.”  
  
Draco bit the inside of his cheek. Then he said, “I hope that you won’t look down on me if I  _do_ relax sometimes.”  
  
“It’s all right for some,” Potter repeated, in the same blank, polite way, and then turned to casting the Sticking Charms on the house. His wand moved slowly and awkwardly, Draco noted, compared to the graceful passes of his hands through the air. Draco knew he had already grown used to the freedom and willfulness of wild magic.  
  
Well, so had Draco. And he was determined to expand the boundaries of his power, to learn what else he could do besides simply cutting things up. Perhaps he would ask Potter for advice. Potter had to have started out thinking he could merely push air around; his mastery over wind would have come later.  
  
But Draco never intended to lose control of the small, focused spells that he could perform via his wand, and he knew that he would never want his fascination with the wandless power to push him there, either.  
  
 _Perhaps that’s a way to repay the debt I still owe Potter. To make sure that he doesn’t lose control of his wand and isn’t restricted to just waving his hands and hoping whenever he wants something delicate done._  
  
*  
  
“Harry!”  
  
Harry whipped around from studying the great clawed tracks in the ground. He had gone out to try and find some trace of the bird that Malfoy had defeated several days ago, and was wondering if this might be the same one, because one of the footprints was missing a claw. But that tone in Ron’s voice jerked him back immediately to the needs of the settlement, and he ran towards Ron across the rippling grass.  
  
High overhead, the sky had turned jewel-blue again, but with a darker blue edging along the sides, like china, that Harry didn’t like. He had read the Unspeakables’ reports. A storm of more than wind was coming, and they would have to take some thought to that when it arrived.  
  
“What is it?” he asked, when he came closer and could see the whites standing out around Ron’s eyes. Subtly, he called the wind up against him. It came, vibrating in his bones like a cat that had crept inside his body.  
  
“Charlie managed to capture one of the animals we saw bounding through the grass,” Ron said, gulping down air. “But we don’t know if it’s safe to eat, and Hermione’s out hunting a spot for a garden…please?”  
  
Harry smiled a little and nodded. “Sure,” he said, and fell into step beside Ron. It was true that he didn’t have much expertise in telling whether an animal was poisonous or not, but the others were used to turning to him in times of trouble. Once Harry had realized the wizarding world would never be safe for Teddy, he had organized this journey. He couldn’t fault his friends for continuing to depend on him when they got here.  
  
He saw pale hair moving up from the side. Malfoy had been sitting with Andromeda and Teddy, renewing his acquaintance with them—or beginning it, with Andromeda, who Harry thought he’d never properly seen. He relaxed and gave Malfoy a smile as he passed. It was good to know that he could leave them, now, in the care of someone he trusted.  
  
And good to know that that person would follow along when problems came up, if only out of curiosity. Malfoy’s eyes narrowed, and he fell in at Harry’s heels without a word exchanged. Harry considered that, then mentally shrugged. If Malfoy wanted to come, he certainly could. Perhaps it would even be beneficial. Harry didn’t know what expertise Malfoy might have, beyond the obvious.  
  
A cage of conjured wooden stakes surrounded a small patch of the shorter grass; to Harry’s relief, Hermione’s spells for turning grass into wood were working. Inside the pen leaped and bleated something so fast-moving that Harry’s eyes blurred before it. He went down on one knee, wondering how in the world Charlie had caught it.  
  
The creature finally slowed down and turned to face him, panting. Harry made out shaggy pale wool, hooves that clicked nervously where they touched the earth despite the lack of anything hard for them to click off of, and a long neck looping and stretching back and forth like a snake’s. The horns on the creature’s head bent backwards, the yellow eyes pointed out to the side, and except for the long neck it really did look like a sheep or a goat. Harry wondered for a moment whether they could be tamed.  
  
And then the creature began to leap again, and this time, Harry thought he saw the leaps curving higher to get over the sides of the pen. That must be its magic, he thought, the speed and the height building up each time.  
  
Harry extended his hand and conjured a small, moving circle of wind around the top of the stakes. If the creature got high enough, it should hit that and fall right back inside.  
  
The minute he raised the wind, though, the creature stopped moving. It turned its head and fixed those yellow eyes on him. The yellow deepened, to gold, and the creature moved one delicate step forwards and then another. As if it was afraid of frightening  _him_  off, Harry thought, amused, and maintained eye contact.  
  
The creature’s throat opened, and it shuddered a little as it made a sound. This was less a bleat as Harry might have expected and more a muffled roar. It went on for a few seconds, as though the creature was trying to turn itself inside out, and then stopped. The golden eyes locked hopefully on Harry.  
  
“I think it’s trying to communicate,” Malfoy breathed.  
  
Ron snorted. “When it’s only a kind of sheep or goat? Don’t be  _stupid,_ Malfoy.”  
  
Malfoy’s face flamed, incandescent, and Harry knew Hurricane was about to see its first murder if he didn’t act swiftly. He shook his head at them and stood up between them, then nodded to the wooden stakes. “I’ll go in there with it.”  
  
“You  _can’t_ , Harry.” Charlie pushed his way forwards, his face grim. “It nearly broke my arm when I tried to catch it. It doesn’t look that impressive, but it can kick like a dragon.” He grimaced and touched his arm, which Angelina must have fixed.  
  
“I’m going to try,” Harry said, and smiled at Charlie. “And I have my magic to protect me, remember.”  
  
Charlie sighed, but nodded and stepped back. Most of the people in their group didn’t offer lots of opposition to Harry when there was something he wanted to do. Harry moved closer to the stakes, though about pulling one of them out, and then decided that was stupid when he had his magic, and it was his magic that had made the goat respond to him in the first place.  
  
He lifted his arms, and the wind swirled around him, snatched him under the arms the way that the great bird might have, and carried him up.  
  
And over the stakes, and down into the middle of the pen, where the white creature promptly charged him.  
  
*  
  
It seemed to Draco that no one here had any common  _sense_. Or, at least, all Potter had to do was mention his power, and people calmed down and smiled as though that should be the answer to all problems.  
  
He stuck his hand out as he watched the white creature bounding towards Potter, its head lowered and the heavy horns on point, and the ground in front of the creature shuddered and broke away. Draco had become excellent at chopping it apart when cutting the sod bricks. That was what happened now, a hole suddenly appearing that even this creature’s speed couldn’t keep it from falling into. It tumbled down to its knees, making the sound as though it was trying to vomit again. Draco hoped it was the creature’s equivalent of  _Oh, shit!_  
  
Potter turned his head and studied Draco for a moment. Draco lifted his eyebrows. If Potter wanted to argue about it, then he could come out of the pen and do so. Draco was finished watching someone necessary to their little settlement risk his life. Perhaps he had saved Potter yet again, and that could count as the fulfillment of his second life-debt.  
  
Instead, though, Potter simply nodded back to him, and then knelt down in front of the creature, which was fighting its way back to its feet with difficulty; earth kept tumbling down into the small hole and weakening its balance. His face wrinkled up, and then he made the same vomiting noise the creature had made. Perhaps his mastery of air allowed him to change his voice to imitate it, Draco thought, reluctantly impressed.  
  
The creature jerked, head and horns bobbing, and then extended a long black thing from its mouth that could be a tongue, except it went on and on, and was forked at the end, like a snake’s tongue. Potter lifted a hand, and concentrated for a moment. Draco, squinting, could make out a faint movement around the fingers. He thought Potter had probably wrapped his fingers in a shield of air. A good precaution, when they had no idea whether the thing could be poisonous to the touch.  
  
The tongue came to rest between Potter’s fingers, or rather on the wind between them. The creature made the sound again, more softly this time, closer to a bleat, never breaking eye contact with Potter. Potter leaned nearer, and the air between them fogged with hot breath. Snake-tongued the creature might be, Draco thought, but not cold-blooded.  
  
He shifted his balance. The golden eyes turned to him, and the creature apparently tried to get rid of its liver again.  
  
Draco swiveled to the side, his hand and his heart and his will and his magic all lifting at once to chop one of the pegs off short so that he could get into the pen, ducking under Potter’s mantle of wind. Someone behind him exclaimed, and someone else repaired the fence with a hasty incantation. Draco didn’t care. They could scold him for this later. All he knew was that, if the creature liked one person with wild magic, then the same thing might happen for Draco.   
  
And he wouldn’t let Potter have  _all_ the fun, either of breaking the rules or of making first contact with an alien species.  
  
The white creature continued kneeling as Draco came towards it, but extended a  _second_ tongue, or whatever it was, from the back of its throat. Draco glanced once at Potter. Potter nodded, accepting the silent request without the need for a question, and flicked his fingers once. In an instant, Draco could feel wind sealing his hands off from contact, in a way that felt like invisible gloves.  
  
He indulged in a moment’s jealousy that Potter had such vivid control of his wild magic, and then dismissed the jealousy. He had all his life here to perfect what he could do.   
  
If he  _could_ do anything besides cut things up. But he would think about that later, and approach the problem from different angles until he had solved it.  
  
He dropped to one knee on the ground. The creature’s tongue swept the air around him, and either it got his scent or it didn’t mind not actually touching skin, because the creature left it there. It turned its head back to Potter and slowly inclined it, until the horns were at the same level as Potter’s chest.  
  
Potter, the idiot, inclined his head back, although Draco did at least think a thin strip of circulating air would insulate his forehead from contact. Head-to-head, the creature and Potter sat there, and then the creature gave a softer and altogether more musical sound and snapped the tongue almost touching Potter back into its mouth.  
  
Its head turned towards Draco, and it curled one hoof up and down beneath it, then snapped the second tongue back. It sang at him, too, and then turned away, yanked its forelegs out of the hole, and trotted towards the far side of the fence, where it paused before the wooden stakes and stood patiently waiting.  
  
“I’ll let it go,” Potter said, when some moments had passed and no one had made a move.  
  
One of the Weasleys started to his feet beyond the stakes. Draco turned his head and saw it was the dragon-tamer, who had started this in the first place by capturing the creature. “Are you  _mad_?” he asked. “I was the one who caught it! It was hard to catch, and if we let it go without even attempting to eat it—”  
  
“We’re not going to eat someone who’s making attempts to communicate with us,” Potter said quietly, and rose to his feet, turning to face Weasley.  
  
Draco got unobtrusively to his own feet behind Potter, looking from face to face and waiting for someone to explode. No one did, but people flowed back and forth, and he could see more than one unhappy expression. Hilariously, they tried to cover those up when they saw him looking, as though they assumed Draco spotting them having a less than united front would be the worst thing possible. Draco moved a step backwards towards Potter, in response. They could choose how they stood. He knew who he stood  _with_.  
  
“We have to have food,” the Weasley said, his eyes locked on Potter’s.  
  
“We always knew that,” Potter said, “and we planned different ways to get it, when we thought the animals the Unspeakables had reported were only rumors and perhaps sunstroke. We don’t need to eat them.”  
  
The Weasley’s face writhed, but he looked away in the next moment. Yielding to Potter’s authority, Draco thought. They did that as if they were used to it.   
  
He wondered how long it would be before the desperation of surviving on Hurricane would change those ingrained habits and the situation would explode. Sooner than Potter thought, he decided, and Potter would either be forced to go along and eat creatures that had seemed to recognize Draco and Potter as kin, or else use his magic against his precious Weasleys.  
  
The thought didn’t excite Draco the way he had once assumed it would, if someone else had described the situation to him. He could feel a headache coming on, instead.  
  
Weasley fell back one step, then another. Then he turned away and said, “Fine. I don’t care, anyway. Maybe we can find some wild plants that you won’t  _care_ if I eat, unless they sing or something.”  
  
Potter said calmly, “You’re right. I don’t care if you eat plants, unless they’re sentient or poisonous.” He strode towards the creature, still motionless, and gestured once, his fingers curling as though he was ripping up grass. The stakes flew out of place, leaping and then settling back in a rain outside the pen.  
  
The creature inclined its white neck to Potter, a process that seemed to take forever until all the sleek curves were on the ground, and glanced back once at Draco. Then it leaped, and flashed out of sight in the golden grass, a bounding shape that made Draco smile in spite of himself. He had always found it difficult to remain neutral in the face of beauty.  
  
When he turned back, he found the Weasleys milling, speaking in soft voices. The only ones who looked at Potter with faces of absolute faith and trust were the Weasel, Andromeda, and Teddy, who looked over to smile at Draco, too, before breaking into a run for Potter and hugging him around the legs as he stepped over the last of the stakes separating him from his friends.   
  
“Pretty thing,” Teddy said, and stared into the grass as if he could see the white creature still running there.  
  
“Very pretty,” Potter agreed, his voice so soft that Draco found it hard to hear. He would have thought Potter was finally realizing the enormity of the rift that he had set between himself and his friends, but he decided, on a second, critical look, that that wasn’t true. Potter was never going to admit that he was wrong—at least not on this score, Draco added with his new generosity. The softness of his voice was all for Teddy.  
  
Draco stared at the corner of Potter’s face, the gentle smile and narrowed eyes, and wondered what else could cause that.  
  
*  
  
“They’re not happy, you know.”  
  
Hermione’s voice was neutral. Harry continued working, his head tilted along the ground as he examined the sod house he, Teddy, and Andromeda would live in—and perhaps Malfoy, if he didn’t hold out for a house all his own. Harry knew for sure that none of the others would be willing to take him.   
  
“I know,” he said, when long moments had passed and Hermione was obviously waiting for  _him_ to talk about it. “But what else can I do? I wasn’t going to eat something that was doing its best to speak to me.”  
  
“Not so much about that. It’s about Malfoy.”  
  
Harry sat up and blinked at her, keeping one hand resting on the ground so he would remember the angle of vision he’d taken. He hadn’t given up on the idea that they could  _perhaps_ have plumbing inside the house, if he could only work out a way to keep the water from turning the sod of the floor to mud. “Really? Why? He’s been using his wild magic to help us as no one else could.” Automatically, he turned his head. Malfoy was cutting sod bricks many meters away, but Hurricane was so flat that it was easy to see out to the horizon.  
  
“That’s part of the problem,” Hermione said. She had her arms wrapped around herself, her head bowed. “That he developed wild magic before anyone else, and that he’s closest to you and to Teddy.”  
  
Harry snorted. “Do you think I would let Malfoy anywhere near Teddy if I didn’t trust him not to hurt him?”  
  
Hermione shook her head. “The others are remembering that for right now. But  _they_ don’t trust him, and I think that’s going to become a problem sooner rather than later.”  
  
Harry wished, for one solid, bitter moment, that they would rely on someone else to solve their problems.  
  
But he had taken up this leadership role willingly, unlike the role that the prophecy had handed to him, and he couldn’t simply yield it now, when that wouldn’t make things better, and might end up with everyone miserable. He cocked his head for a moment, letting the wind play through his hair, and then shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, really,” he said. “I’ll talk to the others, and encourage them to try and listen to the wind and develop their wild magic. If they want, they can go walking in it with me while my power protects them from it. Maybe that’s why Malfoy’s power came to him first, because he spent more time in it that night I found him.”  
  
Hermione’s face cleared. “That’s a concrete action,” she said approvingly. Harry wanted to say  _of course, I’m not much good at abstract thought,_ but she had already turned and was hurrying away, calling over her shoulder, “Thanks, Harry!”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes and knelt down next to the house again, only to realize that Malfoy had come up and was looking at him. “What?” he asked.  
  
“You could make things a lot easier on yourself by sending me away,” Malfoy said.  
  
“Then we wouldn’t have your help, and you would probably die,” Harry pointed out, wondering why everyone was missing the obvious today. “And Teddy and Andromeda would miss you.”  
  
Malfoy gave him a weird half-smile. Harry had the feeling it wouldn’t have been a smile at all, but some unknown circumstance had twisted it into one. And then he didn’t know why he thought that, and felt irritated. But he didn’t let the irritation show on his face, because it wasn’t Malfoy’s fault.  
  
“You want me around?” Malfoy asked.  
  
Harry stared into his eyes. “Yes. Of course.”  
  
Even though Harry didn’t sound that sincere to himself, Malfoy nodded, turned around, and went back to work. Harry watched him for a moment, then shrugged and went back to work himself, since that was the important thing.


	6. Calling the Wind

“That’s a mental idea that can’t possibly work.”  
  
Harry smiled. “And now that you’ve told me it’s a mental idea that can’t possibly work, you’re going to help me with it.”  
  
Ginny pushed her hair out of her eyes and half-shook her head. “I probably am,” she said, aloud, as though silently speaking to someone else. “But I wish I knew  _why_.”  
  
Harry touched her on the shoulder. Ginny needed more reassurance from him than most of the others did, he thought, probably because they had dated once, and she sometimes knew him better than the others. Then he would react in a way that surprised her and made her doubt herself. At the moment, he couldn’t have her doubting her instincts, and that was both a selfish need and a necessary one for the others. “Because you’re the best flyer we have,” he said. “And you know these brooms.”  
  
Ginny sighed again at him, and then conjured a grin. “You’re right about that,” she said. “You  _could_ have been the best flyer we have, you know, if you had kept up your skills as a Seeker.”  
  
Harry shrugged. He didn’t need to say that that had been less important than finding some way to take care of Teddy, and then Andromeda, and then his friends. Ginny knew it.   
  
She watched him pensively for a moment as though she was going to dispute with those unspoken words, and then snorted and said, “All right. We’ll go up this afternoon, if the sky doesn’t turn dark blue.” That was the only reliable sign of a storm they had found so far, that all other colors would vanish in a deeper blue moments before the winds came.  
  
Harry nodded. “Thanks, Ginny.” And he managed to produce a smile for her, too, before he turned back to work.  
  
*  
  
“Take me with you.”  
  
Draco didn’t think he needed to explain himself. There was only one unusual thing that Potter planned on doing today, and Draco was already helping him with the other work, securing the sod houses to the ground with Sticking Charms and wards. What else could he be referring to but the expedition that Potter and Weasley—the youngest one—planned on?  
  
But Potter pushed dirt out of his eyes with one hand and hair with the other and frowned at him as though Draco had asked to go to the moon. Or the moons. So far, it was hard to distinguish them from the stars that hung overhead, but most of them thought Hurricane had three moons. “What?”  
  
“Take me with you,” Draco said patiently. “When you fly. I’m a good flyer, too, and my wandless magic might be of some use.”  
  
He still hadn’t settled, to his own satisfaction, exactly what his power was. Yes, he could cut things, but surely he must be able to do something other than that? Because he could dig, and he could slice, and he could separate things into thirds.  
  
Now and then, the sensation of simply not knowing enough teased his mind. There must be a way to extend either his powers or his conception of his powers, but he didn’t yet know what it was.  
  
He returned to the present when he realized that Potter had never answered his question. He raised an eyebrow, and Potter raised one back and continued settling the wards into place. “You were a good flyer,” he agreed, with no personal emotion in his voice, which left Draco unable to interpret what was left. “But you don’t get along with Ginny, and you could never resist challenging me in the air.”  
  
He said no more. Draco took a step forwards, and another one. Potter still didn’t look up from the wards he was weaving, wards of air. He had become increasingly clumsy with his wand in the past few days, to the point that Draco hadn’t seen him carry it at all this morning.  
  
“ _Look_ at me,” he said.  
  
Potter jerked his head around, and their eyes met. Draco thought he could feel the other man’s magic rising, swirling around in his head in lazy but invisible patterns of aroused air. At the moment, however, Draco didn’t care whether Potter threatened him or not. Potter was the one who refused to make sense.  
  
“I can resist challenging you,” he said. “And I think that I’ve proven I can get along with people I used to hate.”  
  
“Not Ginny,” Potter said, flicking his head to the side to get his fringe out of his eyes again. Draco thought about suggesting that he cut it, but Potter would dismiss that as an irrelevant suggestion in a conversation like this, which indeed it was. Draco struggled to keep his attention on Potter’s face and the words they were actually exchanging. “And even with Ron and Hermione, you avoid them and don’t look at them when they talk to you. I don’t think that proves you can get along with them. Hold your tongue, yes.”  
  
Draco wanted to throw something, more because Potter spoke in an utterly cool and non-condemning voice than anything else. He took a few deep, panting breaths that he hoped wouldn’t sound that way to Potter, and then said, “Then I can hold my tongue when I fly. And you might have need of my magic. You never know.”  
  
Potter studied him some more. Then he shrugged with one shoulder. “No, you never know, with Hurricane,” he agreed. “Fine, then. You can come with us. Just make sure that you don’t antagonize Ginny.”  
  
“Nothing is simpler,” Draco said, with a faint smile. “If anything, you’d think I would have a harder time not antagonizing  _you_.”  
  
“Our grudge isn’t as old as the blood feud between your family and the Weasleys,” Potter replied, and then threw himself into the work hard enough that Draco had to redouble his efforts to keep up with him, and make sure that Potter didn’t ward his side of the building and start to encroach on Draco’s side.  
  
Potter wasn’t afraid of hard work, and he didn’t say deliberately insulting things. Draco wondered why those last words didn’t sit well with him, then dismissed the thought. He would show Potter how well he could both fly and get along with the youngest Weasley. These were the people he would live among, and this was his home.  
  
 _And Potter isn’t going to deprive me of that, no matter how much he might want to._  
  
*  
  
“Malfoy?”  
  
Weasley watched him with open bafflement on her face, and glanced at Potter as though she needed  _his_ help to understand Draco’s motivations. Draco held out a commanding hand, and the broom fell into his grasp without his needing to Summon it. Or chop it off at the handle.  
  
There were some things that his wandless magic would not help him with. Draco decided that he needed to remember that. Potter had called wind to tug the broom into his hand, and he was forgetting, Draco thought, what it was like to be without it. Potter said nothing, but watched Draco and Weasley’s contest with a faint smile.  
  
“I can be polite,” Draco said. “And I thought you might need the assistance of another good flyer to protect you, if that giant bird appeared again.”  
  
Weasley studied him as though he was a piece of flawed Quidditch gear under her care for polishing, and then grinned abruptly. “If you want to come, I reckon I can’t stop you,” she said, and swung her leg over the broom, and ascended in such a simple motion that Draco’s breath stuck in his throat as he watched.  
  
Well, she  _had_ been a professional Quidditch player. Draco shook back his astonishment and followed.  
  
Potter flew up beside him, and he was balancing on the wind, with the broom angled almost straight up, in a way that Draco knew was frankly impossible. His eyes were closed, a sweet, faint smile on his face that Draco had only seen when Potter was around Teddy.  
  
Then Potter opened his eyes, and perhaps because he had seen Draco watching him, his smile vanished. He inclined his head and said, “Which direction do you think we should go first, Ginny?”  
  
Weasley tossed her hair out of her eyes and spent a moment surveying the horizon. Draco suspected that she had decided on their direction long ago and this was only a way to show off to Potter.  
  
“South,” she said at last. “Or assuming that it’s south because the sun seems to rise in the east and set in the west like ours does.” She paused. “I don’t know if I should call the sun that rises in the wizarding world ‘ours’ anymore,” she added softly. “When your home changes so that it’s not your home, when you’re in not just a different town or house but a whole different world…”  
  
Potter wheeled close to her and stuck out a hand that glanced off her shoulder. Weasley seemed to lean into that gesture more than she really should if they weren’t together, Draco thought in scorn, and then straightened up.  _He_ would have liked more strength and comfort from other people, but he didn’t have it, and he had been forced to learn to survive on his own. Had none of the Weasleys ever learned it? Or wouldn’t Potter let them learn it?  
  
That was another thought that wasn’t new to Draco, but would probably be new to most of the Weasels, he thought, as he turned his broom to the south. They thought nothing of endlessly draining someone else’s strength to support themselves.  
  
They ought to face the trials that Draco had. Then perhaps they would achieve something of strength and grace, if they could come through those and comport themselves well.  
  
The thoughts kept him company as they flew.  
  
*  
  
Harry kept his eyes on the grasses underneath them. He knew that Ginny thought he was mental for attempting this, and perhaps Malfoy would have as well if he had stopped to  _ask_ what the purpose of the journey was before he decided that he wanted to go along. But he was here now, and Harry reckoned they  _could_ use the extra help.  
  
He wanted to see exactly how far the plains extended, something the Unspeakables had been unable to find out—but they hadn’t taken brooms with them, either. And it was occurring to Harry that the information they had put so much trust in was unhelpfully incomplete.  
  
As they soared, his mind returned to the problem of the houses. He was thinking about wizardspace. The main problem was that no one knew how to create it. But the tents they had brought had some minimal wizardspace inside them. Perhaps there was a way to adapt that to the houses. Or simply surround the tents with a protective layer of sod, and live that way?  
  
Harry scowled. They had more than halfway built the houses already, and he would hate to abandon them or rip them apart and try to build them in a more “efficient” way. And there was the fact that they simply  _wouldn’t_ have all the luxuries that they’d had in the wizarding world. People needed to accept that. It meant smaller homes, and it meant no bathtubs for at least a while—still a source of joy to Teddy—and it meant different kinds of furniture, and it meant much harder work and different kinds of food.  
  
Something rippled in the air above him.  
  
Harry went into defensive motion before he thought about it, spiraling the broom roughly towards the ground, and flinging a hand out so that whirlwinds covered Malfoy and Ginny in a protective bubble. Then he flew upside-down so that he could find the source of the ripple, turning his head to the west instinctively, since that was the direction he had first seen the giant bird flying from.  
  
Not that, he knew at once. The sky was deepening in color above them, turning blue in a way that made it look as though it was blushing. Harry could feel the wind building, the wind or the magic that drove it, and responding in a lazy way to his own magic.  
  
Harry parted his teeth and snarled. “Storm coming!” he shouted to the others, trusting they would hear him because of the still air inside the bubble, and then turned and dived for the ground. They could perhaps ride out the storm in his bubble, but that was a  _perhaps_ that Harry didn’t wish to test. Far better to take to the earth and use the same kind of anchoring wards that they were building onto the houses to spare themselves the necessity.  
  
The others followed. Harry heard a curse and glanced over his shoulder to find that Malfoy was butting up against the barrier of the bubble, which extended below as well as above them. When he gestured with one hand, Harry winced, and the next instant, Malfoy soared through the hole that he must have cut in the bubble and came up beside Harry.  
  
Harry grinned at him in spite of the pain that had splintered across his mind when Malfoy’s wandless magic clashed with his own. “Did you feel that? That means you can cut through air as well as solid things.”  
  
Malfoy stared at him, and then spoke slowly. “Only you, Potter, would worry about something like  _that_ rather than the implications for our immediate survival.” He swept his hand out and indicated the plains rippling beneath them. “Where are we going for shelter? There’s nothing here. We should go back to the camp.”  
  
“You and I are going to make one,” Harry said, and extended his hand across the air between their brooms.  
  
Malfoy stared at it, in turn, and spoke even more slowly. “Potter, you idiot—”  
  
“Come  _on_ ,” Harry said, and stretched. Perhaps because it would keep him from falling off the broom more than anything else, Malfoy spun to face him, and their fingertips touched.  
  
Harry, not knowing what he was doing except that it was right and instinctive in the same way healing Malfoy’s internal bleeding had been, launched his wandless magic towards Malfoy. It met something in Malfoy that it recognized, the same way that Harry had recognized the windstorm stirring, and then together they turned. They were already above a small hollow in the earth, one of the kind that the plains formed at the base of the tiny hills that crossed them, and Harry knew Malfoy could dig it deeper and he could roof it with air. They could lie flat, if necessary, or sit. This wasn’t meant to be comfortable, it was meant to be survivable.  
  
“When I cut,” Malfoy murmured.  
  
“I’ll weave,” Harry replied, wondering for just a moment if this was the way that George had felt when Fred was alive.  
  
They struck at the same moment, and the ground beneath them trembled.  
  
*  
  
For Draco, it was a more surreal experience than flying beside Potter and a Weasley without arguing had been.   
  
His magic woke in a way he hadn’t experienced yet. So far, he had simply pointed and it would cut. Or he had imagined and it would trim back what he wanted to trim, in the shape he desired. He pushed and he pulled and he tried to imagine it in several different ways, but the magic was just there, functional but not something he could imagine as graceful or able to work with others’.  
  
Now, with Potter, there was more than that. There was the spinning thrust of the power that he wanted to drive down into the earth, and he knew that it would do what he wanted because he wanted it to. And right behind it came Potter’s wind, protecting his magic from interference by the rising storm, and he could  _feel_ Potter’s intentions with it.  
  
That made sense, Draco thought, with the last part of him that was still standing desperately apart from this, trying to avoid giving his heart or his dependence to it. After all, wandless magic was pure will, without a tool to channel it. The tool was the wizard’s body, the wizard’s desire, and that he could feel that desire with his magic was only to be expected—  
  
Then the experience swept him up, and was all.  
  
He could feel himself diving on his broom, but the magic went faster. Down their twinned powers swept, and the earth exploded up in brown, puffy fragments. The wind spiraled around it and took care of it, sweeping it out of the way. At the same time, the hole deepened and deepened, and the sides shaped themselves in the best way, so that they wouldn’t fall in on the heads of those who took refuge in it.  
  
And the wind was there, weaving a dome above it except for a hole in the top that Draco could sense, and which they fell through. There was a confusing moment when Draco felt that he had a body and he had none, that he was pure will and that he wasn’t, and then he was back in his own mind and seeing with his eyes and hearing with his ears again. He shook his head and took a deep breath.  
  
“Weasley?” he asked, turning to Potter.  
  
Potter immediately looked up, seeking the sky. Draco made out a broom that swayed with the currents of the storm above them, and then Weasley fighting with it, trying desperately to join them.  
  
Potter thrust up a hand. Draco’s rose, too, because they were still connected. He had the impression that Potter had meant to break him free of the connection before he did something like this, but he hadn’t, and Draco’s mind perforce rode along, and so did his power.  
  
Potter was trying to turn the wind around Weasley’s broom, to force it to support her instead of damage her, to force it to obey him. And Draco could feel already that that wouldn’t work. The best way to work with Hurricane was to persuade it, to allow it to feel the kinship in its changed children and oblige them. It didn’t like being forced, and the storm bucked and slipped out of Potter’s grasp. He would win in the end, because the wind had no direction or intention that lasted for long, but by then, Weasley would probably be dead.  
  
Draco knew he narrowed his eyes, back in the distant fortress of his face. The thought annoyed him. Weasley had no special talents except flying, but with her gone, they were short one more person who could dig and build and cook and come up with ideas, and that made the work of survival harder for all of them.  
  
He thought, and to think was to do. His magic cut through the winds beneath Weasley’s broom, and provided a still, blank hole that the broom could fall into. It promptly did, and Draco went to work chopping a tunnel for her all the way down, cutting storm to leave quietude in its wake, and snapped at Potter to pay attention.  
  
Potter grasped it at once, probably because he was still linked to Draco than for any other reason, and had winds waiting at the bottom of the hole, below the violent level of the storm. He caught and cradled Weasley, and brought her to the ground inside the dome. Draco immediately gestured at him, and he filled the hole with whirling winds, then knelt down beside Weasley. But he was so tired it was more of a collapse than a kneel.  
  
Draco dropped beside him and laid his hand on Potter’s. He wasn’t as tired, he noted. He wondered if that was because his magic took less effort or was more limited than Potter’s, or perhaps because he didn’t turn to it as the first solution for  _every_ problem. He cleared his throat a few times before he could ask, “How is she?”  
  
“Fine,” Potter said, his voice blurred. His fingers were running over Weasley’s body, seeking broken bones. She was gasping and panting, somewhere, Draco thought, between unconsciousness and full awareness. Well, shock could do that, and the shock of falling off your broom to what you thought was death had to be up at the top of the list. Potter rocked back on his heels and stared up at the sky, then shook his head. “I don’t think I managed to fetch her broom down.”  
  
His voice was so heavy that Draco slapped him on the shoulder. “We saved her life,” he said. “You idiot. That’s more important than the loss of a single broom. And she’ll be grateful for it in a way that she wouldn’t have been if we’d rescued the broom and lost her.”  
  
Potter blinked at him for a moment, then gave the ghost of a laugh and nodded. “You’re right about that, Malfoy. Well.” He sat down next to Weasley, and a breeze ruffled her hair.  
  
“You need to stop that, too,” Draco said. “You fucker. Stop using your wind,” he clarified, when Potter stared at him as if he had no idea what Draco was talking about. “You  _can’t_ have enough strength left to heal her or whatever else it is you want to do. Stop poking at her and eat something. That’s what you should do.”  
  
Potter swallowed through a throat that sounded papery and said, “Right.” He dug into his pockets and pulled out what Draco thought was a piece of bread at first, but then made out was a tight bundle of stalks of the plains grass. Potter put the end of one in his mouth and was chewing it before Draco could shout a warning, and he leaned back and shook his head when Draco tried to slap it away.  
  
“The Unspeakables ate this, boiled,” he said. “It’s safe. Bland, but safe.” He chewed, his eyes on Weasley, his brow furrowed with, Draco was sure, the thoughts racing behind it. Potter was always thinking of the next thing to do.  
  
“Then give it here,” Draco said.   
  
Potter handed over some of the stalks, and Draco took a bite, grimacing. Bland wasn’t the word. He had expected an earthy taste, or something like celery, but instead it was dry and as papery as Potter’s throat sounded at the moment, and he had to struggle to swallow it. The seeds were better, smaller and with a faint sweet taste when Draco’s tongue stripped them from the stalk, but then, anything would be better than  _that_.  
  
“We’ll have to find a better way to cook them,” Draco said, when he had finished all the seeds he could find and put the stalks on the ground. “No way am I eating that for the rest of my life.”  
  
Potter nodded to him. “Thanks for your help, Malfoy,” he said, and sprawled beside Weasley as she sat up and gasped. She shook out her hair, spent a moment with her head in her hands, and then looked up and held out her palm.  
  
“I’ll eat whatever you’re eating,” she said, and Potter laughed and poured some of the seeds he must have stripped and saved into her palm. He watched her eating with a deep expression that Draco had to glance away from.  
  
Except that, when he couldn’t resist and looked back, he found the same sort of look fixed on him.  
  
He understood it then. That was Potter’s “You’re important” look. It was his “You’re worthy of my attention” look.  
  
It was also his “I’m going to protect you” look.  
  
Draco straightened his spine and stared back. “Remember,” he said, barely moving his lips, “we did this  _together_.”   
  
Potter blinked, and blinked again, and blinked a third time.   
  
And then he nodded, almost bowing, to Draco before he faced Weasley as she asked a question about the duration of the storm.  
  
Draco swallowed, his own throat dry and his heart throbbing. He hoped that Potter understood the full meaning of the words.  
  
 _I’m an equal partner. Not a weakling, and not a Weasley. I can do anything he can._  
  
 _Just in a different way._


	7. As This Is True

“You want to go on? You’re mental.”  
  
Draco had the feeling, even as he spoke, that Potter would simply disregard what Draco was saying if he didn’t feel like listening to it. And the distant, slightly amused gaze on him confirmed that feeling. Draco might be one of Potter’s important ones now, he might deserve protection, but Potter wouldn’t listen to him until he thought up better arguments.  
  
 _And why should he? The argument of his own madness is the one that people like Skeeter used against him back in the wizarding world. He’d have to trust in his own sanity by now, more than anything anyone else said._  
  
That could be dangerous in the future, if Potter always thought he should listen to his own instincts above the warnings of others.  
  
But for now, Draco was concerned with other dangers, so he put aside the notion for later and said instead, “Weasley is badly in shock, at least. And if it’s true that experiencing the wind gives you wild magic, hers might manifest at any time. Shouldn’t we go back to the camp and let it manifest on the  _ground_?”  
  
Potter paused, and then turned to look at Weasley. “Ginny, what do you think? Are you ready to fly?”  
  
For a moment, Weasley paused in checking Potter’s broom. Her face as she looked at Draco expressed nothing at all. Draco blinked, then decided that the laws of chance and the number of children they had meant that one of the Weasleys was bound to be born with some sense, at last.  
  
“If you think I’m not,” she said, “then you don’t know me as well as I thought you did, Harry.” And she returned to casting spells on the broom that seemed mainly designed to polish up the shaft and smooth out the bristles. Draco didn’t know what else she would want to do. Potter’s and Draco’s brooms had come through the storm undamaged, after all.  
  
“That’s another point,” Draco said, when he had waited a few moments for some more sense and Weasley hadn’t displayed it. “We only have two brooms now. What does that mean, for three people?”  
  
Potter turned to him, and displayed, instead of sense, a brilliant smile that rushed down his face like a torrent of white water. “It means that two of them ride on one,” he said, and then a wistful expression crossed his face as he added, “Ginny and I have done that before.”  
  
“Better than riding on a dragon,” Weasley said, and she and Potter exchanged a different kind of smile, one that made Draco feel sulky and shut-out.  
  
He didn’t express that, of course. He waited until his heart no longer beat in his ears like a gong, and then he nodded a bit and said, “All right. If you wish to take the risk, then I reckon I cannot oppose it.”  
  
Potter shot him a keen look, and then motioned for Draco to follow him and walked away from Weasley across the springing grasses. Draco glanced at Weasley in turn. From the way she was working on the broom, she might not have noticed. Draco  _knew_ she had. It was there in the faint smile at the corner of her mouth, in the turn of her neck.  
  
“I know that you’re more worried about this than you just said you are,” Potter said, when Draco gave up and followed him over the next little hill. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have spoken a sentence without contractions.” Draco started, and Potter stared into his eyes. “Do you want to continue or not? Give me your true opinion, not the one that’s influenced by dislike of Ginny or desire to go along to get along.”  
  
Draco studied Potter for several minutes. But the surface of Potter’s face never varied. It wouldn’t, Draco decided. This was a serious question, and Potter saw no reason to change it to a less serious one. If Draco objected, then he would at least take the objection into consideration.  
  
Draco’s advice weighed with him—well, perhaps the way this Weasley’s might. Not the same as that of the original, Draco had to concede.  
  
In a world where Weasleys swarmed, that was not a bad position. Draco let out a slow breath and responded with honesty. “If you’ve flown two together before, it should be safe. But this is Hurricane, not Earth, and the way the winds change  _isn’t_ safe. Just because we survived once doesn’t mean we will again, and this time, we have a burden that we didn’t before, in the loss of the broom.”  
  
Potter considered him a moment, then nodded. “It’s urgent that we learn how far the plains extend,” he said mildly. “If we can find a sea, there may be more fish in it than in the small trickle of water in the hills. And we might be able to find creatures that we can hunt, and better farmland.”  
  
Draco only nodded. In the old days, he would have considered this the equivalent of a defeat, but he knew better now. He waited, his hands clasped in front of him.  
  
“But the points you make are all good ones, and anyone can fly this mission,” Potter went on. “We’ll go back, for now.”  
  
“Anyone can fly this mission who is protected by the wild magic, who truly  _belongs_ to this world,” Draco murmured. “That’s the point that you didn’t mention, that we only survived last night because of working in concert. When someone goes up again, it’ll be me and you.”  
  
“Ginny’s the best flyer we have,” Potter began.  
  
“No,” Draco said, and the simple weight of the word made Potter pause. “She’s the only professional Quidditch player, which isn’t the same thing. She knows how to care for leathers and brooms, and she can train other people to fly. That’s important, but not enough. I saw you both in the air yesterday.”  
  
This time, Potter frowned. “All right. You and I will go.” And he spun around and made his way back towards Weasley with short, stunted steps.  
  
Draco followed slowly, wondering why that particular observation, of all the others he had voiced disagreeing with Potter, should be the one to give Potter indigestion.  
  
*  
  
Ginny had understood when he explained it to her, though she had given Malfoy some odd glances, as though she thought he was standing behind Harry and controlling the strings. Harry made sure that he kept his suspicion of her suspicion hidden, however. He wouldn’t have wanted Ginny to think he was putting her in the same category as all those idiots who had assumed he was controlled by Dumbledore, Voldemort, or the Ministry.  
  
Harry worried, though, as their brooms rose, Ginny clinging behind him on his and Malfoy in front of them riding point, that the rest of the Weasleys in the camp wouldn’t understand.  
  
It wouldn’t do to become so caught up in the physical problems of survival, such as building their houses and having enough to eat, that they lost sight of the emotional ones, Harry thought. And he had nearly done so. He had continued to care for Teddy and comfort Andromeda, because that was second nature now.  
  
He hadn’t paid attention to Hermione’s warning about whether the others would resent Malfoy, and he hadn’t given enough thought to whether they were depending too much on him.  
  
On the flight back, as his body took over the mundane tasks of turning the broom into the wind and watching the corners of the sky for dark blue, he made the decision. Yes, they were too dependent. He needed to step back, to encourage them to make their own decisions, and he needed to do it as soon as possible.  
  
He knew one thing he could do, and the moment they plunged back down into the middle of the surprised encampment, he resolved to do it.  
  
*  
  
“Did you find out everything you needed to know already?” That was Bill, hurrying eagerly towards him with Fleur at his side. Victoire was behind them on the grass, playing with Teddy. The sight relaxed Harry enough that he fixed his eyes there as he answered.  
  
“No. There was an accident with the storm. We lost a broom, but we saved Ginny’s life.” He nodded to Malfoy with his chin at the same time as Malfoy laid his hand on his chest, and saw Bill’s jaw drop open. “And now, I think, I’ll let them tell you about it. It’s a long time since I saw Teddy.” He stepped around Bill and opened his arms. Teddy flung himself into them, eagerly declaring that the fish-creatures he had caught from the water and kept were “making noise.” Harry rubbed his nose in Teddy’s hair and murmured that they would go and see them.  
  
“Harry come see,” Teddy pointed out, and kicked in the way that meant he wanted to be lowered to the ground. Harry did so and took his hand, and they started to set off.  
  
Bill’s hand caught him, and Harry turned around and assumed a polite expression. “Is something wrong?” he asked. “Only, Teddy’s waiting.”  
  
Bill looked at him close and hard, and the scars on his face seemed to shine more than ever. Since coming to Hurricane, Harry had noticed, they’d acquired a stone-like sheen. He had no idea whether that meant they were changing, or if the light was sufficiently different here to make them look different. He leaned in, and Harry didn’t flinch because he’d had long practice at people criticizing him for his decisions. He only waited until Bill took it into his head to start speaking, which was the real reason for the intimidation routine.  
  
“They’re going to explain it?” Bill whispered. “Why not you?”  
  
Harry smiled at him. “Because you’re becoming too dependent on me” was what he wanted to say, but hardly acceptable as an answer.   
  
What he said instead was, “Because they were there, and I miss Teddy, and they’ll explain it better than I can. When I start acting, I just rush ahead and miss the  _why_ of what’s happening half the time, you know that.” He lowered his voice as he spoke, and that seemed to have the usual persuasive effect. Bill nodded as if he remembered multiple instances of that, although Harry had had better plans ever since Hogwarts and honestly didn’t think he reacted without thinking much anymore. “They’re more subtle.”  
  
He turned away with Teddy saying, “See fish! See fish! See fish!”, his version of whining, and nodded. “Yes, we’re going to see the fish now.”  
  
And as he left, Malfoy and Ginny were beginning their recitation, and Harry didn’t think he felt more than one or two people glaring after him.  
  
Make other people the center. Hand decisions and important actions to them when he could. Retire from the spotlight. Stick to using his wild magic for the hard work that no one else could do and cease to use it merely to make himself look impressive. Even if he hadn’t meant to, that was the final effect, a lot of the time. He looked impressive, and people assumed they couldn’t compete.  
  
That was the last thing he wanted from his family. They were his  _family._ Not his fans.  
  
“See water now,” Teddy said in satisfaction, trotting along beside him.  
  
Harry rested his hand on Teddy’s hair and kept walking, wondering why he needed leadership or wild magic when he had  _this_.   
  
And he was able to admire Teddy’s fish-creatures, now drifting inside a conjured china bowl, with all due ceremony and real regard, because they were beautiful, and it meant he was with his godson instead of out in the middle of things.  
  
*  
  
Draco let Weasley begin the tale. She was the one they would listen to, their sister or daughter or sister-in-law, and Potter had walked away. If the Weasleys’ regard for him was hostile enough, Draco knew he might not last long without that shield.  
  
But then Weasley turned towards him and said, “I wasn’t the one casting the spell that saved me. What did you do, Draco?”  
  
The shock of the name pinned him to the ground. The suspicious eyes of the others turning to him didn’t make things much better. Especially when the Weasley with the scars shining on his face muttered, leaning in like a werewolf for the throat, “Yes. Why don’t you tell us, _Draco_?”  
  
Draco lifted his head. He would not let them see that they could intimidate him.  
  
Besides, could they? He could chop their bodies into thirds, if they angered him. He could open the ground beneath their feet, and slam the dirt walls together above their heads. He could cut off their fingers and go on slicing the detached flesh into smaller and smaller pieces before their horrified eyes.  
  
The sucking sensation inside him, the release from fear, was dizzying. He stood there quietly breathing, one hand held before his eyes and one on his chest, and ignored the Weasley’s insistence until he leaned forwards and jammed his jaw into Draco’s face once more.  
  
“I asked you a question.” The man’s voice had deepened and settled. Draco reckoned he knew what would happen if he went on being quiet.  
  
 _But he can do nothing to me, even if he is a lycanthrope. I would stop his charge long before he reached my throat._  
  
Draco looked the Weasley in the eye. The youngest Weasley, he saw, watched him with emotions twisting like tattoos over her face. Well. She was the one who had called him by his first name and aroused the anger of her family. She couldn’t blame Draco if the situation escaped both their control.  
  
“Yes, I saved her,” he said. “I chopped the wind holding her apart, and kept on cutting clear air so that she could fall. Potter was the one who caught her at the bottom with wind.” He kept it as simple as possible, and saw faces tighten behind his immediate audience’s shoulders. The only one who looked happy with the news was Delacour-Weasley, because she had some sense. She gave Draco a faint smile and picked up her little girl, who at least hadn’t inherited the trademark red hair. Draco wished her long life and strong blood. Perhaps she could produce enough silvery children that they would have a chance at beauty.  
  
“How could you chop that way?” the Weasley matriarch asked, all brash red hair and red face, shoving her way forwards. Draco tried to repress the memory of the distaste his mother had used to watch her with in King’s Cross Station, as all those brats tumbled around her. “We’ve seen your magic. You can cut the earth.”  
  
“And lots of other things,” Draco said softly. “Though I own that my ability to slice through the wind of Hurricane was a surprise to me, too.” His power could do many things, but not make his neighbors live with him in peace, he reminded himself. It only kept him from having to fear the Weasleys. It didn’t mean they were going to be friends without effort.  
  
The Weasley matriarch exchanged a glance with her husband, and went on with the same granite determination in her voice. Draco thought it a shame that they couldn’t cut her stubbornness apart and use  _that_ for building material. “If it’s true that you saved Ginny, we owe you a life-debt.”  
  
Draco smiled, and they flinched. But he wasn’t trying to make it a terrible smile on purpose. He suspected the sheer amount of glee on his face was enough.  
  
“Oh, it’s such a stupid thing, as Potter would say, to keep track of debts in a new world,” Draco murmured. “I only want to live in peace with you. Shall we say that the debt is forgotten if the past is forgotten?”  
  
He got grimaces for that, and no wonder. It was asking to have the debt repaid in a different way. The Weasleys would have to have civil tongues and couldn’t make jabs at the old feuds and crimes without showing contempt for their daughter’s life.  
  
The Weasley mother gave another glance at her husband, though Draco didn’t know why. It was like asking a monkey to make decisions for a charging bull. “Very well,” she said at last. “Provided that you remember the peace of the settlement should be kept between _everybody_. Of course.”  
  
“Of course,” Draco said, and knew that he looked more gracious than the Weasley woman doing it. He even swept her a little bow, scraping to her on the surface, really driving the point about his greater politeness home. “We’re in a strange world, and we can’t all depend on Potter to survive.”  
  
Delacour-Weasley, and the surviving twin, looked stricken at that as he turned away. Draco hoped they did. He didn’t hang on Potter like they did, but Potter’s strength might one day be all that stood between Draco and one of Hurricane’s storms, which meant Potter needed to spend more time practicing it and less time attending to the petty little needs of his adopted family, however very human those needs might make them.  
  
Draco thought about that as he left them behind. His father had wanted to suppress human needs, he thought, or at best use them as weapons against other people. He had no flaws on the surface that were not carefully crafted traps for enemies who thought they could tempt him or probe a weak point. Of course, that left many other flaws that Lucius wasn’t aware of, and which Draco saw with clearer eyes as he got older.  
  
His mother had said simply that everyone was human and you might have to understand them, but on the other hand, being human was nothing special.  
  
Draco flared his fingers out in front of him and thought about invisible claws extending from them, then snapped his fingers shut. He heard a distinct  _snick_ , and a tiny cut opened in the ball of his thumb, right where the claw on his second finger might have cut the flesh if it existed.  
  
Draco smiled.  _We will be better than human._  
  
*  
  
“They’re pretty!”  
  
Teddy stood with a clutch of golden creatures in his hands and turned around to face Harry. Harry, who had guarded both their hands and skin with air the way he had when the white creature came, bent down and gravely examined the little animals. They were the ones with the gills along their sides and the thrashing movements that made them look the most like fish out of any of the creatures Teddy had caught so far.  
  
“They are,” Harry said solemnly. “But they might have grandmothers and godfathers to miss. Are you going to put them back in the water?” Teddy had kept a few of the other creatures he caught, but everybody had to use bowls and water, and there wasn’t a lot of room on Hurricane for pets.  
  
“Put them back,” Teddy said, nodding, and turned around to drop his hands into the water and let them go. The next moment, he cried out. Harry swirled to his feet, fearing something had bitten him, but Teddy had pulled something else out, a jolting, wriggling silvery thing that Harry could barely see, like a strand of living water that jerked against his fingers. “Uncle Harry, look!” He held it out.  
  
Harry stared. The form was like a snake’s, but two heads blossomed from each end, complete with the kind of flat eyes that the other creatures Teddy had caught tended to have, and the whole form shifted and changed with every change of light. That would be the snake’s camouflage, Harry thought; it was hard to see even when he was looking at it, and should have been impossible to glimpse under the surface.  
  
Which made him wonder how Teddy had caught it.  
  
He started to ask, but the snake wriggled around until all four clear heads faced Harry, and it hissed.  
  
Harry started. The words slid and halted and tried to droop off the edges of his mind, but he thought he understood some of it. The word  _help_ was there, and  _nest._ Harry shook his head, hard, and listened as it hissed again, a sound like a bubbling sulfur pool, but nothing else came clear.  
  
“How did you catch him, Teddy?” he asked, when he could forget about the distorted Parseltongue. “He’s awfully hard to see.”  
  
“See him,” Teddy said, and shrugged. “I see him.”  
  
Harry abandoned that as unprofitable to ask for right now, and nodded to the water. “Well, the snake wants to go home. I can hear him talking, and he’s lonely for the other snakes.” That was his best guess for what the Parseltongue meant. “Can you put him back?”  
  
Teddy nodded at that, and let the snake slip back from his hands. Harry watched carefully, but even knowing exactly where that watery body entered the pool, he still couldn’t see it the moment it merged with the water. He shook his head, then knelt in front of Teddy and reached out, delicately, with his wandless magic, the way he had reached out to Malfoy when they were flying. Teddy was just a baby, and there was no one they needed to try and rescue this time.  
  
He sensed a soft glow of responding power, and he reached out and ran his hand lightly over Teddy’s face, making him laugh. The glow was strongest near his eyes. Harry touched Teddy’s eyelids, and Teddy closed them and giggled and said, “Still see you!”  
  
The wild magic of Hurricane seemed to have affected Teddy’s sight, then. Harry thought he should have suspected it earlier, when Teddy was catching all the small and fast things that no one else had managed to grasp.  
  
He pulled his hand back and spent a moment watching Teddy, who was splashing in the water and watching out for the next creature, chattering to himself in half-formless words about what they did when they were under the surface. So far, it didn’t seem to have done Teddy any harm. And Harry had to expect that the wild magic of the storms would affect all of them, or some, or none.  
  
It didn’t make him any happier.  
  
“At least it makes his sight keener, not duller.”  
  
Harry glanced over his shoulder. Malfoy stood behind him. Harry waved in greeting, but had to ask, “How did you know what I was looking for?”  
  
“I can feel it when your magic reaches for something,” Malfoy considered him through lazy eyes. “Since we were connected, at least, and when you touch someone else gifted with the wild magic.”  
  
Harry nodded. “I didn’t know it would affect someone so young,” he said. He hadn’t meant it to come out in a whisper, but it did. “I thought…maybe Hermione next, or Ginny, since she fell through the storm. Not Teddy.”  
  
“It may have been there since the first day we arrived,” Malfoy said, voice not indifferent but cool. “He was catching some amazing things, fast and small, that I couldn’t see when I first took him to the pool.” He reached out, and his magic tingled along the side of Harry’s in a light, fast brush.  
  
“We’ll need to live with it.”  
  
Harry relaxed. “Yes, we do,” he said. That was reality, and he found reality far more interesting and comforting than platitudes of the kind that Hermione might have uttered.  
  
They walked back to the camp with Teddy between them, and Malfoy didn’t talk about what had happened with the Weasleys and Harry didn’t talk about his fears, while Teddy talked enough for any three people. It was a comfortable thing to do.


	8. Height of Folly

“We’re going to be running out of food soon.”  
  
Harry sat back from the edge of the water and eyed Hermione. He’d been down here again with Teddy, catching the fish and testing Teddy’s new magic. Yes, it seemed that Teddy’s eyes worked on some level that Harry could barely touch, and although Malfoy claimed that he could see the small creatures when Teddy reached down for them, Harry didn’t boast that way. When Andromeda had taken Teddy for his nap, Harry had remained, sometimes staring into the water and sometimes letting his mind work on solutions for their myriad problems.  
  
“I know,” he said. “Earth food, at least, and the grasses aren’t a very satisfactory substitute. What do you suggest?”  
  
Hermione took a deep breath and squatted down in front of him. “You know those first seeds I tried to plant never sprouted.”  
  
Harry nodded. Hermione had built a carefully-warded greenhouse near the edge of their encampment and then planted some of the seeds she had brought for ordinary food as well as the rarer Potions ingredients, adding spells that would force them to grow. Even though she was sure no wind had swept the dirt or seeds away, and the wards hadn’t broken, and they had found no sign of an animal getting inside the greenhouse, there were no tender young shoots. Harry knew Hermione had more seeds, but that was a large investment for no return.  
  
“I think that they’re too alien to the magic of the world, and they’ll never do that well.” Hermione was frowning, turning her wand around and around in her fingers. “Not without intervention, anyway. I wanted to ask if you could ride one of the brooms and take the seeds up into the air, then call the wind.”  
  
Harry smiled a little. “You thought I would  _mind_ doing that?”  
  
Hermione shook her head. “Not exactly, but it could still be dangerous. And you know as well as I do that your wind isn’t the same as the wind of Hurricane. The latter is what I think these seeds need. To be bathed in the wind until they develop wild magic, this kinship to the planet that you and Malfoy have.”  
  
 _And Teddy,_ Harry thought, but he and Malfoy hadn’t told the others about Teddy yet, and didn’t plan to right now. Harry feared it would encourage resentment, because he, Malfoy, and Teddy were the only ones with wild magic yet. Ginny had fallen straight through a storm that ought to have given it to her if anything could, but she said she still felt the same as always.  
  
“You could be right,” he said. “It’s worth a try, anyway.” He was already visualizing the way that he would have smaller winds obedient to him encircling the broom, so that they could catch any seeds that blew out of his hands. He rose to his feet. “You want me to go right now?”  
  
Hermione blinked at him carefully. “You want to? I’d thought—you looked as if you were having a rest.”  
  
Harry smiled at her. “Only in body. My mind never stops moving even when I’m asleep, you know that.” He’d come up with a few solutions for their problems on Hurricane in his sleep, before they left the wizarding world. He was often too tired to dream since they’d come here. “It would feel good to have something to do.”  
  
“You do a  _lot_ ,” Hermione said softly, and reached out to pat his hair.  
  
Harry endured it. He never understood the tone in Hermione’s voice when she said things like that. Of course he knew he’d done a lot, both for the wizarding world and for his family. But it wasn’t as though they were ungrateful. And he did it so that he could survive, along with them. They weren’t as selfish as Malfoy thought they were.  
  
 _They just need to start making decisions on their own. The danger isn’t that they’re selfish, it’s that they might become weak._  
  
“I know that,” he said, when he realized that Hermione was waiting for some answer as well as sympathizing with him. “But I would rather do something than do nothing.”  
  
“Just be careful,” Hermione said, after sighing and pulling her hand back. She always did that when she realized that she couldn’t change his mind. “I don’t want you injuring yourself so that you  _can’t_ do anything.”  
  
Harry grinned at her and raised his hand. His winds shot out from him and towards the broom that he’d taken along on the failed expedition with Ginny and Malfoy. Ginny had told him that he could consider it his personal broom for as long as he wanted. And no one else was using it at the moment, being busy with digging, cooking, and practicing the Healing and Transfiguration spells that Angelina and Fleur had decided, wisely, they all ought to know. “Even if I was lying in bed, I’d find some way to make trouble.”  
  
Hermione finally smiled. “I don’t doubt  _that_.”  
  
*  
  
Draco closed his eyes and extended his hands. For long moments, he was still, letting his heartbeat and his breathing, both quick, subside from his awareness. Think too much about them and he might end up cutting himself.  
  
He began to move his fingers in slow circles, and felt the magic building up. He was more aware of it ever since the contretemps with Potter. It woke more quickly, it responded to his imagination better.  
  
And it would let him do things like this, at least if all his practice with the separate movements hadn’t been for nothing.   
  
 _It would not be._  
  
He let the confidence settle into him, deep as still water, and then he curved his hands and threw them forwards.  
  
When he opened his eyes, he could turn his head along the path his invisible arrows had left. The grass was cleft, not the way that it was in ripples when the wild winds or Potter’s passed along it, but permanently. Draco had imagined himself holding a bow and shooting enormous arrows on strings, and they had furrowed the earth as he had wanted them to. And straight ahead of him lay clumps of grass hit by something so strong that they had been flung out of the ground, roots straggling into the air.  
  
Draco smiled savagely. If he could shoot a clump of grass, then he could shoot something else in front of him.  
  
And that meant he could hunt.  
  
He turned away restlessly. He would have liked to go out now, but they still didn’t know whether any of the planet’s native animals were safe to eat. And even if he went up on a broom, there was no guarantee that they would see anything. The immense bird hadn’t reappeared; only Teddy could see the fish-creatures in the small pool; teasing flickers of motion in the grass were all that remained of the white creatures like the one that had greeted him and Potter.  
  
But he could share his gift with the one person who would appreciate it. He went in search of Potter.  
  
A shadow skimmed over him, and Draco whirled, invisible claws bristling out of his fingers again, ready to cut at any talon descending towards him. When the shadow lifted, and he caught sight of the shape, he knew what he would see before he lifted his head.  
  
It was Potter, pressed flat along his broom, aimed up at the heart of the sky the way he had been when they flew the first time. Draco couldn’t see it, but he could feel the beating on his brow of the cocoon of wind that accompanied him. And the tilt of Potter’s head and the way he held the broom shaft told Draco, without asking, the immense joy that filled him.  
  
Draco hesitated. He would have to wait for a time to tell Potter, then.  
  
But why should he? There was still at least one more broom that no one in camp was using right now, and it was foolish of Potter to go out by himself. Draco went to find the broom, marking the small speck in the sky so he wouldn’t lose it.  
  
*  
  
Harry closed his eyes, and lost himself.  
  
The boundaries were expanding. He could feel his skin thinning, his constant awareness of the world around him and the next task that needed to be done paring away until he had only slivers of it left. He was aware of the seeds that rode in the pouch on his belt, and the winds that surrounded him and had instructions to retrieve the seeds if they fell, but distantly, the way he would remember a dream.  
  
Meanwhile, there was the wind.  
  
The wind!  
  
Harry’s breath caught in his throat as a gust came dancing to meet him. Not one of his; it ran in too many directions, too fast, and he had to slow his broom to greet it. The wind coiled around the shaft of his broom and held it while others swirled and waltzed in his hair, in his eyes, down his throat.  
  
The wild winds of Hurricane, and Harry couldn’t believe that the Unspeakables had been so blind or without feeling as to miss the magic in them. To touch them was to be changed—if they wanted to. If one had the will to pull the magic into them and let their core be changed.  
  
 _Is it weakness of will, that I decided to use the air instead of my wand?_  
  
Harry shrugged, and smiled. Gladness filled him, beautiful and golden as the endless grass of the plains below. He pulled out the pouch of seeds and held them up, and the winds he had brought with him rose up in answer.  
  
The winds of Hurricane were more insistent. They bent his earlobes back with their force. His broom bucked. Harry had the vision of falling from it and not stopping until he reached the earth below, the wild air blowing his own cocoon away from him.  
  
He laughed aloud, and the winds paused to listen to him.  
  
Harry opened the pouch, tipped the seeds onto his palm in that moment of stillness, and breathed on them. They rose and orbited around him, a cascade of black and white and brown and green like a juggler’s balls. Then Harry clapped his hands, and the orbit became wider, so that they were still oriented on him but stepping into the domain of the wild magic.  
  
And then he went to dance with Hurricane, instead of fighting it, and the sky snapped open, and then shut behind him.  
  
*  
  
Draco stopped, poising his broom without difficulty. The power in the clouds had narrowed down to a funnel, but the focus of the funnel was ahead of him, on Potter.  
  
Draco had achieved a new level of control over his magic that morning, but he knew he had more steps to go. Among other things, what he envisioned himself holding or using affected the nature of his magic in ways he hadn’t anticipated. It would be a long time before he was able to hold the pictures of weapons firmly in his mind, never mind more delicate cutting tools.  
  
But Potter…  
  
Potter was dancing.  
  
He flipped end over end, and stopped in the middle of a spin. He held onto the broom only with his ankles as he dangled and swung free, then began to turn in a different circle, as if around the face of a clock, in a way that should have been impossible to achieve. He spread his arms wider and wider, and to Draco’s ears came his laughter, exultant as larksong.  
  
And then he let go the broom altogether, and flew.  
  
Draco lunged forwards with one hand out, but the winds curled around him and stopped him. He had no idea whether they were Potter’s winds or the winds of Hurricane, and it didn’t matter, because—  
  
To watch Potter was to lose his fear.  
  
Potter floated on the wind for a moment with his arms still spread, and then began to swoop and spin much the way he had when he was still on the broom. The broom hung still in the air, and at least Draco was reassured that they would not lose it as Weasley’s had been lost. He caught a flashing glimpse of something smaller dancing around Potter, and wondered what they were.   
  
The wind was taking care of them, though, and he couldn’t go long without looking at Potter. He looked again.  
  
Potter floated on his back now, his hands paddling in the air around him, his hair still blowing and whisking at his face. He exhaled in long, smooth streams of breath that Draco could hear from here. And the expression on his face was utter, relaxed joy and bliss.  
  
Draco almost hated to interrupt.  
  
But the sight had sparked something in his mind, and he reached out a hand and imagined a giant pair of scissors cutting the air in front of him. He imagined them chopping the wind in half, and keeping the cut currents swirling in front of them, like scraps of paper they would slice into smaller and smaller shapes. And he leaned out and braced his weight on one half of that broken wind.  
  
The air sagged beneath him and trembled. Draco wouldn’t have dared try this back in the wizarding world, where the sky was only sky and not the home of violent, magical winds.  
  
Then again, if he had never come to Hurricane, he would never have developed his wild magic, so the question wouldn’t have arisen…  
  
Draco closed his eyes and did his best to lean forwards, to trust, to think that he could mimic Potter’s freedom and he wouldn’t fall to his death. He would have something else to catch him if that happened, he reminded himself. He wasn’t helpless, and he wouldn’t lose consciousness or control of his magical gift right away. If he fell, there would be something else he could do before he hit the earth.  
  
Even if he found it hard to  _picture,_ right now.  
  
He kept his eyes focused forwards, and leaned still further, and the air bulged and rippled dangerously around him. Draco found himself dangling by one hand without any notion of how  _that_ had happened. There wasn’t the same amount of pain and pressure on his arm that there would have been normally.  
  
He looked up. Potter had opened his eyes and turned his head back towards Draco, and he looked as still as a tree in winter.  
  
Draco nodded to him, and released the broom.  
  
*  
  
 _Malfoy! You idiot!_  
  
The thought flashed across Harry’s mind and shattered all his peace. He couldn’t believe that Malfoy had followed him up here, that he couldn’t leave him alone for  _one minute,_ that he always had to interrupt. Hermione wouldn’t have asked him to follow with more seeds; she wouldn’t have trusted Malfoy that much. Harry lifted one hand to do his duty, again, and rescue Malfoy from falling.  
  
Then he realized Malfoy was  _hovering._  
  
Tilting at the same time, and swaying back and forth. But as Harry stared, he felt the air thrumming under Malfoy, supporting him again and again like an ever-diminishing magical carpet. He cut it apart, but as he did, he found a new scrap to cling to, as the broken winds fell swirling around him.  
  
He was supporting himself. He was flying on his own.   
  
Harry swallowed, then breathed out deeply enough that he thought there was no air left in his lungs, and flew towards Malfoy. His magic helped him, spinning his body instinctively into the areas where he would give the least resistance and speeding him along. Malfoy’s eyes, fixed on him, left Harry no room to think about anything but the revelation that had just come to him.  
  
Malfoy didn’t need his help all the time. Some of the time, just like Harry had needed his to rescue Ginny, but not always, and Harry might be able to trust him instead of fearing for his life every time Malfoy wanted to do something on his own. And other than Teddy, he was the only one in camp that Harry knew of who had the wild magic.  
  
He had  _known_ that. But he had assumed that there were some situations that Malfoy just couldn’t handle himself in.  
  
 _He can save himself._  
  
Harry found his breath coming out calmer, and he drew up beside Malfoy without the urge to shout at him that he had felt only a short time since. Instead, he nodded to him and said, “Well?”  
  
*  
  
Draco, still wobbling dangerously on a scrap of air that seemed broader than the rest, stared into Potter’s face. Then he shook his head and said, “I could say the same thing to you.”  
  
Potter smiled slightly and touched his face to pull the strands of wild hair away from his fringe. Draco bristled, assuming that Potter was condescending to him by showing him his scar, but instead Potter said, “I came up here because Hermione had the idea that bathing some of our seeds in the rush of the wind might give them enough magical strength to survive. I didn’t expect anyone to follow me. You  _don’t_ have more seeds, do you?”  
  
Draco would have given a great deal to be able to say “yes,” but instead he had to shake his head.  
  
“Oh.” Potters shrugged and looked over his shoulder, to where the seeds he had brought, black and white and other colors, formed a constellation of tiny stars behind him. “I thought you’d be good at it if you did.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Potter smiled again. “Because of the way I saw you handle yourself.” He leaned nearer, and there wasn’t enough air in the bubble around them, the still air that was sheltered from the dancing storm, Draco thought. “You’re much better at—everything—than I thought you were.”  
  
Draco licked dry lips and tried to remember what he had done with a compliment when he was still regularly receiving them. Of course, they had usually come from his parents, who more or less had an obligation.  
  
“Thank you,” he settled for saying.  
  
“Of course.” Potter turned to face the seeds and gestured with one hand. They split apart from whatever currents had contained them and swarmed back to him, ducking and dipping and rising. “I’m going down now. Are you going to come with me?”  
  
Draco felt his chest swell. “I think I will,” he said. He couldn’t say  _Thank you for phrasing it as a choice,_ because nine to ten Potter wouldn’t understand what he had done anyway. “Are you going to ride the broom down?”  
  
Potter was already swinging his leg around the shaft of it, which made Draco feel a bit stupid, but his voice had the same calm tone as he said, “I think so. It would make the others feel uncomfortable if I flew on my own.”  
  
Draco laughed as he cut the air supporting his broom and made it fall down to where he could grasp it and dangle from it. A bit of struggle, and he was riding seated upright again. “I should say so. Do you realize how much they fear you?”  
  
Potter shook his head. “They aren’t afraid,” he corrected, turning his broom around to face Draco and holding up one hand. The seeds came cascading down and fell into his palm; he tucked them carefully back into the pouch on his belt. “They’re uncomfortable. Hermione thinks I use too much magic, and I’m sure some of the others think the same. But they know how much we need it to survive here.”  
  
“They need you, but they’re uncomfortable around me,” Draco said.  
  
“Because they can’t let the past go.” Potter sneered, an expression so strange to his face that Draco took a moment to recognize it. “They’ll learn. This isn’t the wizarding world, and brooding on past grudges is worse than useless when we have a life to establish.”  
  
“You have more faith in the general intelligence of the human race than I do,” Draco said, and followed him. “There’s very little reason for hatred, and very little reason that they wouldn’t hold onto it.”  
  
“If they hurt you, then tell me.” Potter was withdrawing as he sat there, although his posture on the broom remained the perfect riding one and his voice was no colder than before. Draco could feel the withdrawal the same way he had been able to feel the pulse of Potter’s magic since their connection. “If they taunt you, tell me. If  _I_ find fault with them, then they’ll shut up.”  
  
“Where I can hear them,” Draco said. “But that doesn’t mean that they’ll change their feelings, Potter. Emotions don’t become friendliness just because you’d like to order them to do so.”  
  
Potter whirled around to face him. Draco found his hands gripping his broom hard enough to make the wood creak. Potter’s face was twisted, his teeth bared, his skin so red that Draco could see it glowing like an ember.  
  
“I  _know!_ ” Potter yelled at him. “And I’m  _trying!_  I’m  _trying_ to make sure that everything’s all right and that I’m encouraging them to be more independent at the same time, and I can’t do it right all the time, and you’re not telling me anything that I don’t already fucking  _know,_ Malfoy! I told you what I can do. Or you can ignore it all and stand on your own, which I know you can do. But your sanctimonious little preaching about how I can’t change hatred and they’re horrible people to you sometimes isn’t  _anything fucking bloody new,_ okay? And it isn’t anything  _you_ don’t feel for  _them,_ either! But I came up here to get away from it, and you shove it in my face. Deal with it on your own or tell me, I don’t fucking care, but leave me  _alone_ for right now!”  
  
His broom dropped straight down. Draco knew he couldn’t follow, and didn’t try. He went down on the slant, blinking.  
  
He had thought Potter was more stoic than that. Or he had expected an apology immediately afterwards.  
  
But he got back to camp in time to see Potter toss the pouch of seeds at Granger and then stalk off, ignoring the way she called after him. She glared at Draco suspiciously as he touched his heels to the grass, but Draco stared back in a way that must have convinced her to not to pursue it, or Potter, because she walked away.  
  
Draco went back to practicing shooting grass. He hadn’t told Potter about that, he realized, which was his whole reason for taking to the sky in the first place.  
  
 _The next time I see him, I will._  
  
It seemed more interesting to talk to Potter about that than to talk about the Weasleys, really. That problem would resolve itself one way or another, Draco thought, and probably in a spectacular explosion that wouldn’t hurt Draco himself.  
  
In the meantime, it was nice to know that Potter would leave Draco the choice about whether to accept his help.


	9. Memories of Blood

Harry was bent down the next morning, flattening the grass for another greenhouse with the help of his winds, when he saw a stranger approaching. She had just come down the side of one of the small foothills that led up to the great mountains their camp sheltered under, and now she ran towards them across the flat earth they had laid their houses in, her eyes wide and her robes billowing behind her.  
  
Harry straightened up and stared. He had no idea who she was, and although he knew that she must have come through the gate, that only made him all the more cautious. He filled his hands with wind and went out to meet her. Most of the Weasleys were on the other side of the camp this morning, helping Hermione sort through the seeds they would plant or trying to find another trace of the white creatures, and none of them would have noticed her yet.  
  
The woman slid to a stop in front of him. Harry twitched his head to the side so that she could see his scar under his fringe and kept walking. He wondered if she had seen the display of his wandless magic near the gate to Hurricane. Perhaps so. She might fear him.  
  
But, on the other hand, she must be desperate if she had left her people to come here in the first place. The groups had scattered widely the moment they were through the gate, keeping apart from each other. Harry nodded to her and said, as soon as he was close enough not to shout and not to need the wind to carry his voice, “What’s your name?”  
  
The woman stopped and swallowed. She had a wand in her hand, so pale that Harry thought the wood must be birch. Her eyes went over his shoulder into the camp, then returned to him. She was a tall woman with white hair and grey eyes, but someone less like Malfoy could scarcely be imagined.   
  
“I need help,” she said softly. “We all need help. My name—my name is Hetty Primrose, and you’re the first wizards I’ve seen in days.”  
  
Harry stood still, and let Primrose’s breathing calm down. “I’m Harry Potter,” he said. “Most of my friends are here with me. Won’t you come with me to find them?” He turned, and lifted his hand as he did, sending a wind spiraling away to lock onto Teddy and surround him. If Primrose represented any sort of danger, then at least she wouldn’t be able to strike at Harry’s godson without alerting him.  
  
“I hoped that,” Primrose whispered, treading behind him close enough to catch her shoes on Harry’s. “I hoped that I would find you. You stood against the Dark Lord. Maybe you can stand against this—beast.”  
  
Harry inclined his head, but said nothing. He wanted Primrose to only tell her story once. He thought that was all she had the strength for.  
  
*  
  
“I can conjure food that tastes like plain bread and not sawdust,” Draco said calmly. He had found that it paid to sit on the ground during arguments and look up at the person standing over him. That used their advantage of height against them, rendering them more ridiculous in the eyes of the people watching.  
  
His father would never have consented to abandon his pride like that. But there was a reason his father had never come to Hurricane.  
  
“That doesn’t  _matter_ ,” said the werewolf Weasley, rubbing his face and turning away from Draco. “We need meat. Fresh meat. And conjured food is never going to taste the same as something newly killed. I want  _fish,_ not fish that tastes like bread.”  
  
Delacour-Weasley rose slowly to her feet from where she had been sitting, like Draco, with a pile of seeds in front of her, gathered on her gown. She approached her husband and laid her hand along his shoulder. “You can be quiet for a little while, Bill,” she said gently. “I ‘ave some dried strips of meat in my packs, and I know ze spells to soften them—”  
  
“It’s not the same!”  
  
As Weasley broke away from her and walked across the grasslands, Draco knew that he wasn’t the only one trading glances back and forth. He had thought this particular Weasley bore scars on his face and perhaps his soul, not that he had the lycanthropic infection. Draco had been sure they would leave that behind when they went through the portal; no registered werewolves could travel to other worlds. Potter must have had a struggle to get Teddy through, given his father.  
  
“We can’t catch the creatures yet.” It was Granger as voice of reason, the way she had become more often in the last few days. Draco was at least glad to see that she would stand up and do her part when Potter began to withdraw himself from participating in the Weasleys’ concerns at every breath. “We need more experience in hunting them. Bill, if you want to take an expedition out and try to find one—”  
  
“And then Harry would just make us refrain from hurting them anyway,” the werewolf interrupted, shaking his head and giving a dry laugh that reminded Draco forcibly of Fenrir Greyback’s. “Why try that?”  
  
“Because we can’t afford to have someone going off and searching the grasslands himself, without backup,” Granger said steadily. “If nothing else, how are you going to find your way back? You don’t have Harry’s ability with the winds to make them lead you here.”  
  
That at least got through to the Weasley, who paused for a while, then snorted. “Fine. But I want to know that someone is going to  _do_ something about our lack of meat, not put it off.” And he flopped down beside his wife to count and sort seeds.  
  
Granger exhaled in a shaky way, and turned around to find Draco watching her. At once she flushed and turned back to the seeds with extra violence. Draco wondered what she thought. That he despised her for not putting Weasley down more forcefully? Of course not. People who had grown accustomed to someone pampering them would object for a while to the idea that they were now expected to take care of themselves.  
  
“We have a guest.”  
  
That was Potter. Draco looked up quickly, feeling the thrum of wild magic between and through his bones. Potter it was, but a stranger behind him, a woman in long grey robes that made Draco think of how bulky they would be as she struggled through the grass. And yes, she bore rents in them and dirt on the hem.  
  
The werewolf wandered back as the woman took a deep breath and said, “I’m Hetty Primrose. We were—we were setting up camp in the hills to the north, where we found a large creek of water. It was hard to protect ourselves from the winds, but we worked together, and we did pretty well.”  
  
She cast an agonized glance at Potter. He took a step forwards, and as if that was protection, the words burst out of her in the next instant.  
  
“I’m the only one left. A huge bird came down from the sky and—” She shut her eyes. “The tents we had were no protection against it. It burst the wards. It snatched up the goats and chickens we had in one claw and used the other and its beak to kill everyone it could. I only survived because I was digging a grave for Mr. Clay, who’d already died, and I was down in the grave and it didn’t see me.” She wrapped her hands hard around the sleeves of her robe, and then she looked at them. “I d-don’t know what anyone can do about the bird, but I came here to find out if there  _was_ something.”  
  
*  
  
Harry felt the weight in his belly change its nature. Now it felt as if he were carrying a bowl of water, and he knew that he would have to do something about this. He hadn’t wanted to hurt the bird in case it was an intelligent creature, but if it had slaughtered one whole group of wizards, maybe even bigger than theirs, there was nothing to stop it from coming after Teddy. And his friends.   
  
He caught Malfoy’s eye. He could understand the reason that Bill was looking almost gleeful; he wanted to hunt the animals on Hurricane, not accept them as sentient beings. But why had Malfoy stood up and watched Primrose as though he assumed there was something in her story that was specific only to him?  
  
Harry dismissed the idea and turned back to Primrose. What mattered most was getting other facts she might not know she knew. “What did the bird look like?”  
  
“It blotted out the sky,” she whispered, and closed her eyes. If she had walked on foot from the encampment, Harry thought—and she would have had to do that some of the way, looking for signs of human habitation, instead of just Apparating and hoping—then she would have had time to put her memories together and step through the first moments of shock. “It had brown feathers on some parts of its body, white and black on the others. And it used the wind. I remember feeling pinned to the ground, and I thought it was just fear, but I really think that it was sending wind through the camp, and making people stay down so it could strike at them.”  
  
Harry nodded. That fit with his memory of the great bird as a creature that could wield the wind as a weapon, and it increased his suspicion that he would need to be one of the ones who hunted it. Only those with wandless magic of their own, probably, would be able to stand equal to it. “How long ago did this happen?”  
  
“Five days.” Primrose started playing with the sleeves of her robe again, then dropped them limply and took a breath so shaky that Harry could hear tears in the back of it. “I al-always thought it would know it missed me and come back, but I didn’t see it again while I was walking.”  
  
“Which direction did it go in?” Malfoy interrupted. Harry nodded to him. It was a practical question that he hadn’t thought to ask himself.  
  
“What directions does this world have?” Primrose snapped, and then paused and answered herself. “Towards the setting sun. It was at s-sunset that it attacked, too.”  
  
Harry nodded to her in turn and opened his mouth to ask another question, but Molly stepped past him and wrapped her arm around Primrose. “You can interrogate her later,” she told Harry, firmly but gently. “Can’t you see that she’s about to sit down in the grass from exhaustion? She needs something to eat before she leads you to the bird.”  
  
“I can’t go back,” Primrose said, mouth twitching and face pale. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but I can’t. Please.”  
  
Molly looked shocked, but Harry knew what that meant. “No one was going to ask you to,” he said quietly. “I promise. We want to know what damage the bird caused, and where it went, and how it fought. But then you can stay here. And you’ll be able to rest and recover with us, I promise.”  
  
Whether it was because he was Harry Potter or because of the multiple promises, Primrose seemed to believe him. She leaned on Molly’s shoulder and whispered, “Then let me finish the story. I can rest later, and r-right now I want to get it out.”  
  
Molly sighed, but supported her. Primrose talked on, about how the bird had come from the west and made multiple passes to be sure that everyone in the camp was dead, then gulped the bodies down its crop. Harry raised his eyebrows. When he caught Malfoy’s gaze, he nodded, and the magic flowing between them grew thick.  
  
That might mean the bird had nestlings. Of course, perhaps it wanted to save the food for later, for itself, but it did attack and return in the same direction, and there was no real reason for it to do that if it had no territory; it could just as easily have flown east. They would find it by hunting that way, Harry thought, and Malfoy moved towards him and stood next to him in response to the certainty in his bones.  
  
“I hid,” Primrose whispered. “There was so much death, and noise. I heard them all screaming. The bird swept up and down. I thought it would get its wings tangled in our tents, but it blew them all over. Except o-one that it went right through.”  
  
The certainty inside Harry, and beside him, grew deeper. Yes, that sounded like a bird with wild magic in its wings, able to simply sweep around obstacles if it wanted to.  
  
“I don’t know why it didn’t see me.” Primrose had her sleeves knotted so fiercely that Harry thought they would be tatters by morning. “I don’t think it h-has a good sense of smell. It snatched all of them and rose up, and it didn’t leave anything behind. But it didn’t touch the crops we’d planted.” She closed her eyes and stood there, then snapped them open again as if she was too horrified to face what was behind it.  
  
“It’s a meat-eater,” Malfoy said, though Harry knew that was to tell the rest of them, and not because Harry hadn’t already figured it out himself. “All right. How long did you wait before coming out of hiding?”  
  
“The rest of the day.” Primrose shielded her eyes this time. Harry thought she was looking west, but it was hard to tell when her face was in shadow like that. “I didn’t know what else to do when I came out but to start walking. Someone said you were here.” She looked at Harry with that complete faith that he’d hated when people showed it in the wizarding world. “I knew you could do something about it.”  
  
Harry checked the impulse to argue, because she was probably right in this case, and nodded. “I’ll try.”   
  
Molly bustled Primrose away, and Harry turned back to face the arguments that were rising from the Weasleys. Charlie thought he should go, and that Harry should take him with him, since Charlie had experience in capturing dragons. Bill was all in favor of a new source of meat, and ignored the way that Fleur tried to remonstrate with him. Hermione reminded everyone that the birds could be as intelligent as the white goat-like creatures had seemed to be, but was roundly ignored. Ron said simply that they needed to take care of the bird, but he thought it was too dangerous for Harry to go right now. It was several days since the bird had destroyed Primrose’s encampment, he pointed out, and it was probably hungry again by now.  
  
Harry cast a glance to the side when Ron said that, and yes, Malfoy was standing there, his face as bright as the first time Harry had seen Hurricane’s sun.  
  
“But I won’t be alone,” Harry said. “And Malfoy flies as well as I do, and he has magic as deadly.” The words came out of him as if he knew that, as if he had thought them before, though he was certain that he hadn’t. But he fell back a step and gestured to Malfoy with a raised hand, for all the world as if he were presenting him before the Wizengamot.  
  
The faint flush on Malfoy’s cheeks showed that he felt the force of that comparison. But he lifted his hands and assumed the position of a bow for a moment, his eyes half-shut. Then he jerked, and Harry turned his head, along with everyone else; the performance had been so convincing that they couldn’t help looking for the flight of an invisible arrow.  
  
Only Harry, he thought, and perhaps Teddy, felt the way that arrow actually rose and flew. And Teddy was too young to tell anyone what he felt, if he did.  
  
The force plowed into the ground, flattening the already short grass here and creating a furrow that reminded Harry of the one the bird’s talons had made when it came to get him that evening a fortnight ago. He whistled appreciatively and clapped his hands. Malfoy turned his head to look at him, and Harry felt for a moment as if they were alone, the way they had been the other day, hovering high above the earth.  
  
Bill broke the spell. “Can you be sure that that’s enough to slaughter the bird?” he demanded of Malfoy.  
  
“I cut one of its claws off before,” Malfoy said, his voice high and the flush retreating down his cheeks. “And that was the first time I used my magic, before I understood what it could really do. I just reached out and flailed around, and what I wanted happened. I think that’s enough proof that I can do more now, when I have the magic under control and I shape my imagination around it.”  
  
 _Or the other way about,_ Harry thought, and Malfoy again turned to look at him as if he had heard the silent thought.  
  
“We don’t know that this is the same bird,” Hermione interrupted. “It could be larger, stronger. Primrose never said that she noticed a broken claw on its foot.”  
  
“We’re still ready to face it,” Harry said, absurdly calm. No visions of Teddy hunted by the bird while he was away would come to mind; the thought sat on the surface of his mind for a moment and then sank down into the pool. “You know we can do it, don’t you, Malfoy?” A struggle to call him that, to not just leave off the name altogether and seek the sky in his company right now.  
  
“We can,” Malfoy said, and walked towards him, facing the Weasleys. Harry realized the unfortunate implications of that a moment later, as though they were on one side and his family was on the other, but Malfoy was the one who could help Harry bring down this threat. That made him more immediately important than his family’s good opinions. “Will you lend us the brooms?”  
  
He was looking at Ginny as he said that, treating her cordially as being in charge. Harry couldn’t help beaming at him for that. Malfoy’s eyes half-lidded, but he didn’t flush, just kept his eyes on Ginny and his silence as he waited for her answer.  
  
Harry glanced back at her. “Will you?” he asked. “I promise that we’ll bring them back safely.” If nothing else, he and Malfoy could send the brooms to the ground, out of harm’s way, and then dance on the winds the way that Malfoy had shown he could the other day.  
  
Ginny sighed and looked around in a way that said she would have liked to vanish into the still-long grass on this side of the camp and escape the staring eyes. But she nodded. “I think you’ll do the best job hunting the bird, if it has to be hunted,” she said.  
  
Harry darted forwards and shook her hand. He would have kissed her cheek, but there was more than one person around him who would interpret that gesture wrongly. “Thank you,” he said, and then turned and ran towards the place where the brooms were kept. Malfoy was beside him, and Harry knew without asking that he would keep up and they could run and fight and cast as one being.  
  
It was  _insanely_ satisfying.  
  
*  
  
Draco sucked with greed at the sensation inside him, the one that said he was connected to Potter, that he could do  _anything_ as long as Potter was there beside him.   
  
It was something he’d never felt before. His father had sometimes spoken of it when he cast next to other Dark wizards, and his mother when she was young and worked with one of her sisters. They had said that it was addictive, dangerous: dangerous to be that dependent on someone else, that anxious to have their good opinion.  
  
Draco thought, as they swung their legs over their brooms at the same time and leaped into the long slow twilight, that his experience must be different from his parents’. He didn’t want or need Potter’s good opinion. He knew he already had it.  
  
What he wanted was the sureness that someone was fit to hunt beside him, and he knew Potter was. The image of Potter spinning in the embrace of the winds, flying without a broom, from the other day came back to him, in colors as vivid as if it were happening at the moment.  
  
That only confirmed Draco’s idea that the wild magic was changing them in ways beyond the obvious, and that they would soon be better than human.  
  
He wanted to share it with Potter, but refrained. For one thing, Potter probably knew, if the way he slanted a look at Draco was any indication. And for another, they had something more important to talk about.  
  
“How are you going to kill the bird?” Draco asked.  
  
“I was thinking that I could break the wind out from under it while you cut off its wings.”  
  
Draco smiled. It hurt his lips. “A simple matter. But the bird might not hold still for long enough to make it simple.”  
  
“Then we deal with flying blood,” Potter said, and hitched himself sideways on his broom. Draco wondered if it should have made him nervous, Potter sitting like that as the brooms hurtled along far above the ground, but it didn’t. “A more pressing question is whether we should kill the nestlings as well, if it has them.”  
  
“We should,” Draco said. “They might starve without their parents at any rate, and we need meat.”  
  
Potter inclined his head. “You’re not worried any more about them being intelligent?”  
  
Draco laughed. The wind tore the sound away, but they could hear everything up here, at least as long as they were together. “Less worried than you ever were. I’m worried about the difficulty of killing them, and their sentience only concerns me in that they might be the kind of creature who can seek vengeance.”  
  
Potter hesitated, then inclined his head. “I think you’re right—”  
  
“Of course I am.”  
  
“Well need to hunt them and then worry about bringing the meat back and testing it for safety reasons later,” Potter finished.  
  
“I think the werewolf might want to eat it without even checking it for poison,” Draco noted.  
  
He had meant the eldest Weasley, but Potter’s winds yanked at him hard enough to make his trousers billow. Then Potter said, in pained tones, “Teddy is  _not_ a werewolf.”  
  
“I meant the one with the scars on his face,” Draco said. “And he’s doing an excellent acting job if he isn’t.”  
  
That produced a thoughtful silence, and then they both looked up at the same time. Draco felt it: something gigantic moving through the winds of Hurricane, against the wild magic, something with power and ferocity of its own.  
  
Something like them.  
  
He flicked a single glance at Potter. Potter flicked one back.   
  
And then they rose, and flew after it together.


	10. Masters of the Air

Harry half-closed his eyes. His senses were spinning outwards from him again, along many different directions, the way that they had done when he flew on his own above the earth. He no longer knew if it was merely the winds that were carrying them, or whether his own affinity for the winds of Hurricane meant that he spread along trackless paths of magic, too.  
  
It didn’t matter, not when, either way, they were telling him that an enormous bird was ahead of him.  
  
And its shape was irregular on the bottom. Harry doubted that came solely from the curved talons. He could envision the sharp edge that Malfoy had caused when he cut off one claw too clearly for that.  
  
He darted a glance at Malfoy. He was turning his head back and forth, his fingers poised in front of him, flying the broom with his knees alone. Harry soothed the way that his muscles wanted to bunch. Malfoy had already proved the other day that he was more than sufficiently skilled to fly without his hands. Harry didn’t need to worry about him. He probably had to worry more about the bird’s beak and talons and the ways it might use the wild magic of Hurricane against them.  
  
“You feel it?” he whispered.  
  
Malfoy nodded. “You knew I did a minute ago, when you looked at me,” he said. Harry flushed, and then nodded. “I’m readying my weapons,” Malfoy added, and swept his hand up and down in front of him. If he squinted, Harry thought he could make out a flash of torn wind, like a series of glass knives slicing the air.  
  
Harry smiled. A dense cocoon of air began to gather around his shoulders, like a cloak he held close. “Good idea.”  
  
Malfoy opened his mouth. Harry thought, from the way he squinted and held his head back, that he was going to say something about how he  _always_ had good ideas, and it had taken Harry long enough to notice that.  
  
But he didn’t get the chance, because Harry’s sense of the enemy moved, and the air tore in front of them with a series of screams as the bird dropped out of the racing clouds and straight towards them, dark blue light dancing at the edges of its wings.   
  
*  
  
Draco gestured without thinking about it. It was one thing to flatten or cut the grass and another to wound a great beast that was flying directly at him.   
  
The knives he had imagined fastened to his fingers made a few feathers whirl loose and drop into the abyss, but Draco had lost sight of how big his enemy was. The small pains didn’t seem to register. It loomed over them, its legs as big as their brooms, and lashed out, claws unfolding and extending like a cat’s.  
  
Draco flew backwards and down at the same time, and tried not to think about how his muscles were shrieking, how difficult it was. He should have practiced more with flying and less with magic in the past few days—  
  
But he escaped. The foot chasing him snapped short, and the bird screamed, a noise that literally shook the air around Draco and forced him further down, towards the earth that he could barely see.  
  
Potter was closer to the foot with the longer reach, and Draco thought he would use a hammer of wind to batter it away, or perhaps simply duck. Either way, he didn’t expect Potter to take any injury.  
  
And neither did he expect Potter to fly closer, swooping around the bird’s leg like a trailing ribbon, and then leap off his broom and grip its leg.  
  
The bird screamed again. This time, Draco was somewhat ready for it and could control his broom, but not his eyes. Potter held onto the scales around the claws, and laughed. Then he dug his fingers in and whistled, a sound so harsh it made Draco’s eyes water.  
  
The winds came. Draco felt Potter rip them from the bird’s control—it seemed to wield them instinctively, and so probably didn’t know how to react when someone brought conscious mastery against it—and slam them into the creature’s belly. Draco looked up and saw that belly sag and bend. The bird whirled and staggered in midair and went flipping and flying away, struggling to recover its balance.  
  
And it took Potter with it, still clinging to its leg.  
  
“Potter!” Draco screamed, more to relieve his feelings than because he thought the idiot would hear, and took off in pursuit.  
  
*  
  
Harry was flying faster than he ever had before. He knew that. His hands and his skin stung with the revelation, and with the bird’s screams from above, and with the rings of hard, horny scales he gripped that scoured his palms. He knew he would die if he fell. A few seconds of the plunge would probably be enough to kill him, from the speed alone.  
  
For the first time in the two years since the war, something in his heart woke up and sang.  
  
Harry doubled down and avoided the searching sweep of a talon as the bird tried to use its left foot to scrape him off the right one. The world was dark around him, a blur of sensation. He didn’t know whether he was feeling or hearing what the bird would do next, but he knew that a claw through his body would be the next result. The bird had a better sense of where he was now, and it would take the threat more seriously after the blunt blow that Harry had slammed it with.  
  
Harry opened his arms, called the magic until it filled him, and leaped off the bird’s leg with the song of his heart inside him.  
  
There were no words but verbs as he fell through the air. Spin. Tumble. Tremble. Jostle. Snatch. Lose. Seize.  
  
Fly.  
  
He rose, and the bird’s next strike, made with the enormous beak that sounded like an iron gate closing above him, missed. Harry spun and rose again next to the bird, hovering on a whirlwind, watching as the head swung back and forth, flat eyes trying to focus on him.  
  
Malfoy was coming in from the other side, and from the way his hands were splayed in front of him, he held weapons that would inflict deep wounds. Harry only had to capture the bird’s attention until then.  
  
Harry doubled up his hand, his heart still singing frantically, violently, like a bird trying to break free of its cage with the power of its voice alone, and lashed out. The wind spun around and imitated his fist, and by the time that it reached the bird, it was traveling fast. It hit the bird in the eye, and made it stagger in the air. Harry held his breath, waiting to see the result.  
  
The bird flapped its wings heavily, turning in a ponderous circle, and came for him with both beak and talons aimed in the same direction.  
  
Harry knew what Malfoy’s intent would be before he did it. How could he not, with his own power throbbing in his belly and blood and Malfoy’s rising in concert? Harry flung himself backwards, down, sideways, and laughed as the bird circled after him, and laughed as the bloody spray exploded from the side of the bird’s left wing, as Malfoy’s weapons scythed into being and began to carve it like a turkey.  
  
This was dangerous, horrifying, uncontrollable…  
  
Glorious.  
  
*  
  
It was always a good thing, Draco reckoned, to  _know_ that your hunting partner was mad instead of only suspecting it.  
  
He knew that Potter was holding the bird’s attention for him, but no one else Draco knew would have thought of punching it in the eye, even if they could. And no one else would have been laughing as they somersaulted down the air currents. The bird almost snatched Potter out of the sky twice on his corkscrewing fall, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care.  
  
 _He might not care until the talons are already on him,_ Draco thought, and swept his hand back the other way.  
  
The trick, he had found, was to imagine that he held long weapons, and sharp ones, ones that were capable of creating real damage instead of only a bit. Those razored not only feathers off the edge of the great bird’s wings, but also flesh, and the raptor was screaming and wheeling back towards him, then towards Potter again as he pummeled it with wind, unable to decide which enemy was more worth punishing.  
  
Draco caught Potter’s eye, and found that Potter was nodding to him. About what? Draco wasn’t capable of communicating silently with him all the time, only when they were close and their magic was in tandem.  
  
But Potter swerved towards him, and some of that silent communication came back. Potter was suggesting that he drive the bird towards Draco while Draco hurt it more and more. At some point, it would have to die from blood loss.  
  
Draco couldn’t have said whether he read all that from Potter’s mind, or from Potter’s magic, or whether the frantic, senseless gestures that Potter was making in midair suddenly made sense to him. But he knew what Potter wanted, and he put the plan into action while Potter was still dodging a buffet from the bird’s tail.  
  
Draco’s weapons carved a shallow slash down the bird’s breast. It screamed loud enough to wake the dead from the camp it had devoured and this time chose its target, diving at him with feet thrown wide enough that Draco knew he couldn’t dodge. Things were already not working out the way that Potter had hoped.  
  
 _But since when is that unusual?_  
  
Draco concentrated his efforts on its wings this time. He would chop and cut the feathers, send them spiraling away, and begin to slice into the flight muscles. The bird wouldn’t be able to keep itself aloft for long, and the closer to the earth it fell, the higher he and Potter could ascend, and the more of an advantage they would have over it.  
  
The bird watched him with glittering eyes, and continued to sweep closer. Draco prepared to drop straight downwards, if he had to. It would carry him out of striking range—  
  
 _No, it won’t. Only your imagination limits your magic._  
  
Draco dropped like a diving trout, and out of range of the bird’s claws. Then he envisioned longer claws on his fingers than he had borne yet, and punched straight up and out, the weapons on his knuckles shining in his mind, made of tempered steel that would bend a little but not break at the opposition.  
  
Bleeding holes appeared in the bird’s leg and breast, and it broke off its dive with a screech and whirled away. Though almost deafened by the noise, Draco smiled. He thought they had done it some serious damage at last.  
  
Well,  _he_ had. That didn’t settle the question of where Potter was.  
  
Draco glanced around, and saw Potter above the bird, in the shadow of a cloud. Potter’s eyes touched his, and Draco tensed without knowing why, his magic flexing in front of him and shortening instinctively. The last thing he wanted to explain to the Weasels was how Potter had managed to dive onto Draco’s weapons from a height, impaling himself.  
  
Potter threw his arms wide. The air above him stirred and began to rotate. Draco frowned. He had seen Potter use similar whirlwinds at the gate into Hurricane, but Draco didn’t know how effective they would be against something so much bigger than the pieces of paper Potter had flung around there.  
  
Then Draco heard a steady roar, and his eyes widened.  
  
Potter wasn’t calling a whirlwind. He was calling a true hurricane.  
  
*  
  
Harry was spinning. He sometimes thought he had forgotten everything outside the motion, everything outside the moving. He knew that the breath in his lungs danced circular patterns, and his arms could have flown away from his shoulders and he wouldn’t have known. His heart thumped in orbit. His blood flowed in spheres. His legs were gone, nothing left but the whirl.  
  
And he as spun, the winds came and spun around him.  
  
There was no other way to defeat the bird. Malfoy could carve away at it, but it had much better control of the winds than Harry had thought it did. He had discovered that when he rose above the bird’s head again and felt a net of wind try to snare him. They could chip and cut, but the bird had resources waiting in reserve, more magic than Harry could grasp. And if it began to truly hurt, it could always fly away, and they would have a hard time finding it again.  
  
So he danced.  
  
The winds were all around him now, a thick grey cocoon, revolving so fast that Harry’s eyes streamed and wept trying to keep up with them. But he knew they were centered on him, that he was in the eye of the storm, and that when he wanted to move in a different direction, the hurricane would follow him.  
  
 _Time to make this planet live up to its name._  
  
Letting go of the spin was the hardest thing Harry had done in his life. It seemed so right, so natural, by now, to rotate and let the wind try to catch up with him. But he dropped it, and fell straight down, towards that bird that he could still feel beneath him, trying to catch back the wind Harry had stolen.  
  
The howl of the storm was the first thing he’d properly heard for minutes. And his heartbeat and his bloodbeat were still dazzling him, masking exactly what he had done from him, which meant he was blinking and skidding through the outer edges of the storm before he could see what had happened.  
  
The bird was screaming and flailing in the hurricane, blood and feathers being sucked away from it in a visible stream. Harry felt its magic unfolding and springing away from it at the same time, trying frantically to harness the storm. It had no idea what it was doing, and for the first time in their battle, its instinctive competence was losing out against the product of a plan. Harry smiled and pumped up one fist.  
  
And then he saw Malfoy’s broom, caught in the edge of the storm, with no Malfoy on it. A quick survey beneath him saw Malfoy crouched in a forcibly still patch of air, cutting away all the wind that tried to come near him. That meant he wasn’t hurt, but it  _did_ mean that he was falling, if in slow freefall.  
  
Harry swore, knew that he should have asked Malfoy if he was in position before he used that particular plan on the bird, and darted after him.  
  
*  
  
 _Stupid Potter._  
  
One could be in perfect understanding with someone, Draco thought, as he sliced away another part of the storm trying to tug at his trousers, and still not be able to survive the magic they unleashed because they hadn’t bothered to make it clear where and when that magic would strike.  
  
A bit unwieldy for general situations, that maxim. Then again, there weren’t going to be general situations for Draco ever again unless he could get control of his fall.  
  
Draco rose to his feet, balancing, and stared down at the ground beneath him. It was growing closer and closer, enough that he could see individual waves of grass and the small hills buried beneath them now. He wondered for a moment if anyone other than Potter would mourn if he smashed himself to death on them.  
  
 _Would Potter mourn?_  
  
Little time to answer the question. Draco had come up with a tactic that he thought might work, as long as he imagined the necessary degree of flexibility in his weapons. He threw a hand down and  _saw_ the claws in his mind, the curve of them and the way they shot away from his body, how they would stab and plant themselves in the dirt—  
  
They did, while he was still at least a hundred meters above the earth, and bowed and bent, flinging Draco upwards as if he was on a bouncing ball. He caught a glimpse of Potter wheeling past him, probably because he’d flown down to rescue Draco and been caught by surprise when he rescued himself, and laughed dizzily.  
  
“You call hurricanes,” he shouted to Potter, “and I save my own life!”  
  
His arm ached from the way that his claws were stabbing in, and as he reached the top of his arc, he whirled to bring his other arm into play. He would imagine the same thing, and be supported by claws on that hand, too, and then he would imagine them on his feet, and shorten them bit by bit until he was crouching on the ground.  
  
A shadow blew over him, and the grass rippled and bent. Draco swore as he swayed and Potter wheeled away from him like a butterfly caught in his own storm.  
  
The bird had recovered enough to chase them.  
  
The wings pointed downwards and stroked in small, short bursts that Draco was sure were responsible for the problems they were experiencing. Wind broke from the cage the bird was herding it into and hit them both, and Draco, at least, had no power that could stand up to that. He shortened the claws in his hand immediately, and dropped downwards, beneath the level of the first currents it hurled.   
  
But they chased him, and he knew that he couldn’t go fast enough to escape and still be safe. He was too new at imagining his magic, at creating the perfect circumstances to rescue himself.  
  
He might have to turn to Potter after all.  
  
The thought painted the inside of his mouth with sourness, but Draco wanted to live more than he wanted to not owe another life-debt, so he looked around for Potter. He found him hovering in the middle of the cleared space that Draco had just vacated, his head tilted up and his eyes fastened on the bird.  
  
Draco felt a momentary hope. Things that Potter looked at like that didn’t survive.  
  
But the bird had mastery of the wind, and although it was covered with wounds, it seemed it was simply too big to hurt. In a normal creature, Draco knew, at least one of his strikes would have uncovered bone. There was no glimpse of that, though, only muscles working as the bird spun in place like Potter had, throwing wind at them, and as Draco’s eyes streamed and his hair was plastered flat to his skull, he had even fewer glimpses.  
  
Potter turned his head to look at Draco.  
  
Draco almost recoiled before the look of harsh, sleepy purpose in his face, until he remembered that Potter was, at least nominally, his ally. He nodded and tried to wait for whatever it was Potter wanted to communicate to him.  
  
Potter held out his hand. Draco raised his hand to grasp the air on a parallel line, although he didn’t know why he bothered. He should pay attention to anything else, including the way the bird was almost upon them and the delicate balancing act he had going on with the long steel poles that he had to imagine growing out of his feet and stabbing into the earth beneath him.  
  
Potter’s intention came reeling to him like a flung line across the air, and Draco gasped as it smacked him in the throat. It was a plan that Potter was informing him about, unlike the hurricane he had called, and it was one that stood a good chance of succeeding, also unlike the sole use of wind against a creature that was master of the wind. And for it, he needed Draco’s help.  
  
Draco thought it was that which recommended the plan to him most of all.  
  
The moment he nodded, Potter ascended like a dragon. That speed, that precision, carried him around the edge of the bird’s wings and into the sky above it before it could react. It pulled up and hovered—not something such a huge creature should have been able to do, but then, its magic could enable it to do lots of things that it shouldn’t, like break through the wards on a wizarding encampment.  
  
From above, Draco heard the roar and shriek of rising air. Potter was calling up his magic.  
  
Draco stretched his hands out and began to imagine a huge net woven above him, a razor-wire net, with sharp corners and glittering strands that looked quiescent until someone passed between them. Then they would unfold and stab into the flesh and skin of the unlucky victim like a horde of beestings.  
  
It was a creation of pure imagination, but Draco could still see and feel it sparking into being above him, there when he turned his head, gone when he looked at it full-on.  
  
The bird seemed to sense it, too, and opened its wings further.  
  
But at that moment, Potter hit it with all the wind at his command, and Draco straightened his net and snapped it out, and the bird had run out of options.  
  
*  
  
The plan worked just as Harry had envisioned.   
  
He punched the bird in the back this time with the full force of the hurricane he had called concentrated into a single blow. This was what he should have done before, but no time to think of that now, only time to think of power, blowing up and letting loose, striking down and forcing the bird downwards—  
  
And Malfoy’s trap was waiting. Harry could feel that much, even if he didn’t know exactly what Malfoy had done.  
  
The bird fell, flailing its wings uselessly for purchase on its magic that was simply weaker than Harry’s, and hit the trap. One moment, Harry could see it there, struggling, its feet waving up, its beak turning as if it could feel the things entwining it and break them apart, the bonds of pure magic.  
  
Then there came a great, silent, vicious blossom of blood and flesh, as Malfoy’s flower unfolded and shredded the bird to pieces.  
  
Harry had to fly up to escape the violent gush of blood, and he saw Malfoy duck to avoid a tumbling claw—the one he had broken last time, Harry saw with a sense of unreality. He hovered, staring, and watched the falling-apart of the broken body, all the slices of poultry anyone could want tumbling down to the red-soaked grass.  
  
Harry continued staring. This was—something he hadn’t thought was possible, and something that he hadn’t meant to create. He had come up with the plan, of course, and driven the bird into the net so it couldn’t escape, but his mind simply hadn’t been able to encompass the extent of the destruction.  
  
He looked down, past the last plummeting cuts of meat, and met Malfoy’s eyes.  
  
Malfoy smiled at him.  
  
And Harry flew down to him, and around him, while Malfoy shortened the supports holding himself up and dropped to the ground, not trying to touch Malfoy, because there was no need for it.  
  
No need, either, for lots of explanation. They both Summoned their brooms—although Malfoy used his wand and Harry did it by sending out a wind to find it and bring it back to him—and in the moments until they arrived, stood silent and soundless, facing each other but not leaning in, feeling the thrum of their connected magic.  
  
They had done something unbelievably violent and powerful, and they had done it together.  
  
Harry noticed the way that Malfoy looked at him as they mounted their brooms, constant little twitches of his head to check that he was there, because he was looking at Malfoy in the same way.   
  
It would have been a too-short flight back to the encampment, and other people who would require them to speak. By one accord, they went hunting for the nest instead.  
  
In the moments before they took off, Malfoy reached out and graced a hand down Harry’s wrist. Harry turned his head to him and returned the touch blindly, shoulder and forearm and Dark Mark.   
  
He didn’t want to go back. He would have been perfectly happy to fly forever above the bending grasses, to battle beside Malfoy, to hunt with nets full of bursting blood.  
  
Only the memory of Teddy would compel him to return.


	11. Confrontations

“Here it is.”  
  
Harry hardly needed the call from Malfoy to know where he was. The way his broom hovered above a niche carved into the side of the mountain—and this was more worthy of being called a mountain than the high hills  _they_ were sheltering under—had already marked the place, and Harry was speeding towards him.  
  
There was more, too, if he wanted to acknowledge it, the bond that stretched between them like folded paper or crumpled lace, the one that pulled if Harry was too far from Malfoy and made him relax when he was near him. But Harry didn’t intend to think about that. It would make things uncomfortable with Malfoy and the Weasleys, and it might prevent Harry from caring for Teddy as much as he wanted to.  
  
The nest turned out to be a shallow dip that the bird had scratched into the side of the mountain the way a quail might build one on the ground. It was filled with long strips of white wool that Harry was sure had come from creatures like the one that had tried to communicate with him and Malfoy. Inside it lay a storm-colored orb that Harry’s eyes almost skipped over at first; it was white on the bottom, to blend with the wool, and blue on the top, making it reflect the sky.  
  
Then he stared. Malfoy crowded closer to his side at the same time, as if wanting to share the moment of revelation, even though he must have realized what was going on before Harry did.  
  
“No nestlings,” Harry whispered. “An egg.”  
  
Malfoy tipped his head down, not saying all the things he could have about how long it had taken Harry to notice the obvious.  
  
Harry took a deep breath and extended his hand to run his fingertips over the shell. It felt far warmer than he had believed it would, with no bird here to incubate it, and the flexibility of the shell beneath his fingers surprised him, too. It was like touching a coiled-up snake.  
  
Malfoy was waiting when Harry turned his head. Harry nodded. He understood the impulse that passed back and forth between them, and he agreed. They would have slaughtered nestlings, both for the meat and because there was no way to leave them to starve or—if the other parent bird survived—to grow up to become menaces the way their parents were. But an egg…  
  
They might try taking it back to their camp. They might try seeing if they could hatch and rear it.  
  
“A net,” Malfoy murmured. “That would probably be the easiest way to transport it, if that’s what we’re going to do.” He looked at the wool in the nest and cocked his head, as if wondering how sturdy a net it would make.  
  
Harry laughed. “Why do we have to?” he asked, and waved a hand. The egg drifted into the air, borne on the winds that he called up and commanded to do the job. In instants, it was wobbling in midair just behind the bristles of his broom, and he looked at Malfoy and smiled.  
  
Malfoy didn’t smile. “You’ve used a lot of magic today, more than I have,” he said. “What happens if you lose control suddenly and the egg falls?”  
  
“It never happens that suddenly,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I feel tired first, and I don’t feel that way.” He felt, in fact, as if he could have jumped off his broom and flown another hundred miles. Maybe the wild magic in the winds of Hurricane, whispering past him as he battled the bird, had renewed his; he didn’t know. “I can sleep on my broom if I really get tired. But we should get back soon anyway. The others will be wondering what happened to us.”  
  
Malfoy nodded. “And how are you going to keep the egg warm on the flight back? If it’s exposed to the cold in the heights we fly at, then we might arrive back home with nothing except the means to make a giant omelet.”  
  
Harry hesitated. He had to admit that he didn’t know. He could perhaps warm a wind with his breath if he tried hard enough, but he’d never done that before, and the egg and the worry of the others wouldn’t permit him to wait.  
  
Malfoy sighed and took out his wand. The murmur of a Warming Charm seemed like the most foreign sound Harry had ever heard, and he watched, blinking, as the shell glowed red for a moment. They could both see a tightly-curled shadow inside it, and Harry swallowed. “Is this a good idea?” he whispered.  
  
“For you to become so dependent on your wild magic that you forget to use your wand?” Malfoy tucked the hawthorn wand away. “Of course not.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “I knew you would say that,” he said.  
  
“Because it’s  _true_.” Malfoy shouldered his way through the wind towards Harry, and his eyes were as hot as stars, as the shell had briefly become. “Why would you  _do_ that? Give up options, lean so much on a power that’s unreliable in the first place and tires you out faster than ordinary magic?”  
  
Harry held Malfoy’s eyes, and smiled slightly. “I  _meant_ that it might not be a good idea to try to take that bird back and rear it,” he said, “because of the food it probably eats. But we were willing to kill helpless nestlings in the first place. If we can’t rear it, it’ll be easy to kill it later.”  
  
Malfoy was silent, waiting. Harry spread his hands. “The power of Hurricane is something I understand, something I’m akin to, something that I can fight or control with wild magic,” he said. “The dangers in the wizarding world were different. Political ones, ones that people wanted to impose on me and demand the answers to even when I didn’t have them. There, I might need mind-control spells and all the rest of it. Here, it’s wilder and rawer, and I can get by with my wind.”  
  
*  
  
Draco put a hand over his eyes, and took a moment to check through his fingers that the egg hadn’t fallen. He had little faith that they would be able to rear the bird inside, but after going through what they had to win it, he didn’t want to see it simply tumble uselessly to the ground, either.  
  
“You think you’re immune to politics because you’re here?” he murmured. “You should have paid more attention to what the Weasleys are asking of you, and thought—you should have  _thought._ ”  
  
“I didn’t mean that I’m immune,” Potter said, although it had sounded like he meant it to Draco. Potter’s voice sharpened. “Would you please take your bloody hand down so that I can see the eyes of the person I’m talking to?”  
  
Draco dropped his hand smartly, and leaned forwards to loom in Potter’s face. Even though he had so nicely done what Potter asked, Potter snarled a little before he continued. “I mean that these are smaller politics. I didn’t understand the whole wizarding world, I couldn’t control it, but people expected me to. And I’m not a hero to all the people here. I’m a brother and a friend and a family member.”  
  
“You’re becoming less a hero with every day,” Draco murmured.  
  
“I welcome that.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “It’s good for you that I came along, Potter,” he said, trying to think of what would have happened had he pursued his original plan, to make his way across Hurricane to a place where no one could see him, change his appearance with glamours, and then join one of the other groups. Potter would have fallen from his position of leadership before he even became aware there was a struggle, and then everyone would have perished. “You don’t know what it means to the Weasleys to lose their hero as they settle in a place where they want heroics.”  
  
Potter sat still. When Draco looked back up at him, he was smoothing his hand along the shaft of the broom, his head lowered and his eyelashes falling on his cheeks in a pattern that looked like a puzzle.  
  
“I think I might, hearing it reflected through you,” Potter muttered.  
  
Draco nodded. “That’s what I meant. I’m your political eyes, and you’re the wild magic and the protection for us. But it’s only a partnership that works if we work together in the first place.”  
  
“Of course,” Potter said, looking up abruptly. “I know that I only survived the bird and managed to kill it because you were there.”  
  
Draco let the smile spill across his face instead of biting it back, and nodded. “And now we have to go and tell our  _companions_ what happened,” he said. “Warm the egg, or hide it. And tell them about the meat.”  
  
“Bill will be happy,” Potter said, and wheeled his broom. The less he had to talk about things that mattered, Draco reflected as he followed him, the happier he was.  
  
His gaze lingered on the egg that bobbed along in a net of wind.  
  
Well.  _Sometimes_ Potter would talk about important things. He still didn’t seem to see them in the same way normal people did, though.  
  
*  
  
The first thing that happened when Harry’s broom landed was Ron running forwards and hugging him, followed by Hermione. “We were so worried,” she whispered into his ear, and hugged Harry until he gasped a little. He heard the egg settle gently into the grass and the shouts begin, but neither of his friends seemed to have noticed.  
  
“The minute you left,” Ron said, tightening his hug, too, “we decided that we’d made a mistake. I mean, you and Malfoy probably  _could_ handle the bird best, but, mate, we were always there for you. We wanted to come.”  
  
“The next time there’s something important to be done,” Harry said, spreading his arms as wide as he could and gathering in as much of them as he could, “you can.”  
  
A moment later, he jerked, as though a noise had spiked through him. He looked frantically around, but Teddy was waving at him from Andromeda’s arms, and everyone else, as he could see by a quick count, was there. There was even the timid shape of Primrose peering from around Molly.   
  
No, the noise had come—or would have come, if there was really a noise—from behind him. Harry turned his head and saw Malfoy standing there with his arms folded, his gaze so steady that Harry flinched a little from it. He raised an eyebrow, and Malfoy jerked his head in a nod and then turned to face the egg.  
  
 _Oh._  
  
Harry had said that he wanted Ron and Hermione to come, and Malfoy seemed to assume that that meant Harry wanted them to play the role that Malfoy had played this time. That they were important in the same way, or could wield magic as strong. And of course that wasn’t true. That, Harry thought, would sting all the more for Malfoy. He seemed offended when Harry ignored what he saw as reality.  
  
Before he could work his way free of his friends and go to Malfoy, though, Bill stepped up, his scars gleaming like teeth. “Did you kill the bird?” he demanded. “Where is it?”  
  
“Lying in a bunch of shredded pieces on the grass a few miles from here,” Malfoy drawled without turning his gaze from the egg. Charlie had stopped near it and was gazing at it greedily, but from the way Malfoy’s fingers moved, Harry knew that he was thinking of conjuring a whirling series of blades to hold him back. “Potter came up with the plan to push it with wind, and it landed on some of the weapons I can imagine.” He turned his head and smiled sweetly. “I think the appropriate analogy would be cheese put through a grater.”  
  
Hermione made a disgusted noise; so did Ginny. Bill only stalked closer, with his head moving as though he assumed that there was meat dangling on invisible strings in front of his nose. “And why didn’t you bring any of it back with you? Why did you bring this egg with you instead?”  
  
“We thought that you could go and take all of it you wanted,” Harry intervened. He  _wasn’t_ about to have Bill blame Malfoy. From the way that Malfoy had changed color, it wasn’t safe for either of them. “Not that we know even now whether it’s safe to eat, you know. You have to consider that before you take a bite.”  
  
“I know what it’ll taste like,” Bill whispered. “ _Red_.”  
  
He turned back as Fleur called sharply to him, and left a clear path for Harry to see Malfoy’s face. Malfoy relaxed a little as Bill got further from him, but his nostrils were still flared and his face was still a shade that Harry didn’t like much. Ron and Hermione were involved in a debate with Arthur, now, about whether there was any way to determine that the meat was safe; Arthur had brought along a Muggle tool that he claimed would tell, but neither Ron nor Hermione wanted him to use it.  
  
That left Harry free to step up to Malfoy.  
  
Malfoy waited until Harry was at his shoulder, and then turned his head away. Harry exhaled hard enough to flutter Malfoy’s hair, but the git still didn’t turn around.  
  
“Look,” Harry said, voice hard, eyes fixed on the egg and the way that Charlie couldn’t stop hovering around it. “I would rather have you beside me on a hunt than anyone else in the world.” It was the best he could say. He couldn’t, and wouldn’t, apologize for wanting to be with his friends, but it was also true that he couldn’t, and wouldn’t, say that they were more skilled in the necessary magic than Malfoy.  
  
“I’m touched,” Malfoy said.  
  
“Take it or leave it, it’s true,” Harry said, and walked away from him. Teddy stretched out his arms and almost crooned to be taken, and Harry plucked him from Andromeda and held him close, rubbing his cheek against the little boy’s hair, listening and nodding along to his chatter about his fish-creatures.   
  
He could feel the fierce flush that had touched his cheeks when he was talking to Malfoy dying, and he reminded himself to remember that. He shouldn’t ever have tried to talk to him like that in the first place; he shouldn’t have assumed that just because he and Malfoy understood each other when they hunted that they could be friends. Malfoy needed to be by himself, and he could rescue himself, and Harry still didn’t understand him well enough not to cause offense even when he tried.   
  
 _This_ was real. Teddy, and the way that Harry held him, and the way that Teddy squirmed and laughed and wanted his attention.  
  
This was the closest bond in his life.  
  
*  
  
“You should have brought some of the meat back.”  
  
Draco straightened slowly. He had buried the egg in the earth with the help of Charlie, the Weasley who seemed most sensible right now, and who definitely had the highest hope for the bird that might hatch from the egg. Draco had answered his questions about the fight, and had simply remained silent when Charlie had mourned the necessity of destroying the parent bird. That was the best way to get along with these Weasleys, Draco thought, to make them think that you believed what they did.  
  
But now Charlie had gone, and the werewolf was behind him again, with his words more than slightly touched with a growl.  
  
Draco turned. He was surprised to realize that his slowness came from one thing, and one thing only: not wanting to set off a struggle in which the other Weasels might feel they needed to take sides. He was not afraid. Not at all. Not of the werewolf, not of the birds, not of the disapproval that he knew he still faced.  
  
Afraid of nothing at all. His magic guarded him from that.  
  
What he was, was  _impatient._ With Potter, with the others who looked at both of them with wide eyes and then backed away, with the sickness that had shown on some of their faces when he had described how he and Potter had killed the bird. With the sheer  _fact_ that the wild magic was changing some of them into something better and how Potter had trouble accepting that.  
  
Next to that, the werewolf was a small concern.  
  
When he completed his turn, he could see the man standing near him, in a patch of shadow, the scars on his face still brilliant in the moonlight. Draco smiled at him and cocked his head. “They went to get the meat, I know,” he answered, gently. “Why didn’t they take you with them? Were they afraid that you would pounce on it the minute you saw it and start devouring bloody corners, without even waiting to see if it was safe? I think that’s selfish, not to care about anything but your appetites when you have a child to support.”  
  
The werewolf trembled closer, and then made himself stop and show his teeth instead of lunging. Draco waited. He had weapons on his hands, without moving, that could open the werewolf’s belly and throat.  
  
It shocked Draco how  _tempting_ that thought was, and that what kept him from it was more the thought of what Potter’s face would look like than anything else.  
  
“You don’t belong here,” the werewolf said, softly enough that no one else could hear, violently enough that Draco nearly gestured with his weapons anyway. “Some people have noticed. And some of them have noticed what’s on your face when you look at Harry. I wanted to tell you that.” He turned away with his shoulders high enough that they were probably brushing his ears, and stalked away towards the part of the camp where Draco had last seen his wife and daughter.  
  
Draco rather thoughtfully returned to building walls of earth around the egg, so that it could be warmed in the absence of the sun. What did the werewolf see, then? That Draco wanted to hunt with Potter? That both of them were affected by the wild magic, and that they were more powerful than they had let the others know as yet? (Though Draco suspected any chance of keeping  _that_ secret would be out the moment the others saw the shredded bird).  
  
Or did he have some inkling of the connection the wild magic had forged between them?  
  
Either way, it seemed like something Draco should talk to Potter about. When he had finished covering up the egg completely, he went in search of him.  
  
*  
  
“…And the mermaid went back home, and swam through the gates of the seashell palace, and danced with the rest of the flounders all night long,” Harry finished, and leaned down to kiss Teddy on the forehead. He had already been up later than he should be, but Andromeda hadn’t wanted him to put to sleep when he started whining for Harry.  
  
Teddy grabbed hold of Harry’s hair now, and held his head there while staring pathetically up into his face. “But the princess?” he demanded. “The swans?” He frowned, as though trying to remember some other aspect of the story to be concerned about, and then finished with, “The  _princess_.”  
  
“I’ll tell you all about that tomorrow,” Harry said, and gently separated Teddy’s fingers from his hair. “I told you about not pulling, right?”  
  
Teddy nodded, and then yawned, hard enough to make his jaw pop. Harry smiled a little and stepped back from his bed, which was in the center of the earth-house. Harry’s wand, always glowing with  _Lumos_ now since he used it for so little, lay beside the grass-stuffed pallet, and Teddy turned over and grabbed it, stretching.  
  
“Princess tomorrow,” he said, paused, and gave Harry a quick look from under his eyelids. “Good  _night_.”  
  
“Good night, Teddy,” Harry told him, and gave him a grave little bow, and retreated to the entrance of the house. His steps were smooth and quiet now, he found, his muscles much looser. Being around Teddy always relaxed him.  
  
He enjoyed about a moment of that before Malfoy stepped up to him.  
  
Harry chained the first sixteen responses he wanted to make. Malfoy was in a dangerous mood, and that meant Harry was, too, his reactions and emotions rising automatically along with Malfoy’s.  
  
Which was  _not_ the way it should have worked, and one of the reasons that Harry had distanced himself from Malfoy for the last few hours, staying only with Teddy. He didn’t want to be this—this responsible  _to_ someone. He loved his family and friends, and he had become their leader of his own free will, but that was being responsible  _for_ them.  
  
Malfoy could save himself, he was as strong as Harry was, but somehow Harry still owed him explanations and a sensitivity that he thought was impossible, since Malfoy had got angry at a casual, intimate thing Harry said to his friends. He didn’t know what to say or do next around Malfoy except when they were killing things or using their magic in concert. There couldn’t be any chance for either, here on the ground in the midst of—  
  
 _Peasants._  
  
Harry’s skin broke out in cold sweat. He could feel the pressure of Malfoy’s gaze on his face like steel claws, and Malfoy’s mind pouring into his like fresh water mingling with salt. He didn’t know which of them had had the thought, but either way, it was equally wrong. He turned and began to walk towards the hills with strong, springing steps.  
  
“Potter.”  
  
Malfoy’s voice was everywhere, and Harry had no choice but to turn and face him. It wasn’t compulsion. Not exactly. Only that he had to, that he owed Malfoy something in the same way he owed his breathing to his lungs.  
  
Harry hated the sense of constraint bearing down on him, the way he’d always hated rules, and he shaped his voice to sharpness as he said, “What, Malfoy? Only I didn’t actually have something to eat after we landed.”  
  
Malfoy drifted closer. “You know this isn’t about that,” he said. “You know that you can’t lie your way free.”  
  
Harry ground his teeth. He wanted to scratch the crawling restlessness out of his face and hair, but there was the chance someone would see, so he said, “Fine. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”  
  
*  
  
This close to Potter, Draco badly wanted to say,  _Nothing. Only we need to go flying again, and I want to race you to the ground._  
  
There was a quivering, pacing beast in him, that was it, Draco thought. Not himself, not exactly the magic, although he could feel it better when he was closer to Potter and their magic was flowing into one another’s. It was more as though the magic had somehow become loose in him, wild and prowling, and the only thing that would calm it was the proximity of the beast that Draco recognized as lurking in Potter.  
  
He wanted, he wanted, he  _wanted,_ and he couldn’t even say what it was he wanted, other than blood and flying and killing.  
  
He closed his eyes, snapped them open, and then remembered.  
  
“The werewolf warned me against becoming too friendly with you,” he said, working his tongue around his teeth. “It seems that he thinks I’m trying to corrupt you somehow. That could be a concern. He might know that we’re linked by the wild magic, too.”  
  
“His name is Bill, not werewolf,” Potter said, staring over Draco’s shoulder. “I’ll talk to him in the morning about what he does and doesn’t know, and try to explain—try to explain what kinds of things connect us, anyhow.” He sighed, and his gaze came back to Draco’s face. “Thanks for letting me know.”  
  
Draco nodded. He could go now. What he had come to say was said.  
  
But he couldn’t. The beast was still there, straining and pacing, and he needed  _release._ He was tired, so it couldn’t be use of the magic and it couldn’t be flying, but he couldn’t make himself move a step away from Potter, either.  
  
Potter stirred as though he would be the one to walk away, but it was plain that he couldn’t, either. So they stood there in the almost-faded twilight of Hurricane, staring at each other.  
  
And Potter was the one who broke first, springing at Draco, attacking him with his forehead to Draco’s forehead and his lips and teeth to Draco’s lips and teeth at the same time.  
  
 _Yes. This. If nothing else, this._ Draco raised his head, and kissed Potter back, beast touching beast—  
  
And the night rent apart between them, with furious gladness.


	12. Flare Like Fire

Harry found himself on the grass, not knowing how he’d got there, winds blowing all around him, tossing up the grass, making him gasp and scramble for purchase on the ground. Or Malfoy, because it was  _Malfoy_ kneeling above him, his head bowed, his eyes the color of shadows, his magic scraping and cutting and snapping playfully just above Harry’s skin.  
  
 _Malfoy_.  
  
Harry had never done anything like this before, none of it. But the magic was there, and the connection between them was exploding, and Harry could have given up his power over the wind more easily than he could have stopped himself from reaching up and ripping Malfoy’s shirt off his shoulders.  
  
Malfoy laughed, and gasped as wind ruffled the hair on his chest, and then flung himself on top of Harry and kissed him at close quarters. Harry winced as their teeth banged. Malfoy’s hips hurt, too, jabbing down and slamming his. He rolled them over so it wouldn’t hurt so much.  
  
Malfoy had the same idea, it seemed, and they wrestled ineffectively in the grass for long seconds before Malfoy pushed Harry back and squirmed violently away from him, down his body. His hands yanked Harry’s legs apart. Harry writhed and hissed. Even through the cloth he wore, he could feel the claws that sprang from Malfoy’s nails.  
  
There was a bite on his hip that might have been an apology, and then Malfoy rent Harry’s pants and trousers apart in turn, with one smooth snap and flex of his knuckles. Harry was hard, and that hurt, too. He jabbed his hips down before Malfoy could get a grip on them again.  
  
“ _Wait_ a fucking minute,” Malfoy said, settling his shoulders and head in such a way that it was hard for Harry to resist, and opened his mouth. Breath and wetness. Harry turned towards him, unable not to.  
  
Malfoy’s mouth opened further, and his tongue licked out, sudden and fast, hot and welcome. Harry whimpered as the heat flowed around him. This was the first time, too, something that he couldn’t back away from or get out of. From the way Malfoy snapped his teeth at him, he wouldn’t allow Harry to forget that whimper.  
  
Malfoy rolled, and teeth and tongue settled into the obvious place. Harry let his eyes shut as Malfoy sucked him, but couldn’t persuade himself to go limp. It was too tense, too rushed, too  _hard_. He heard Malfoy’s weapons closing and clicking again and again around him, and his own wind circled outside that, ready to rush Malfoy and bowl him over if he did something that gave Harry pain.  
  
Well. More pain than it would give him to be without this, anyway.  
  
He was surrounded. Cradled. Circled.  _Everywhere._ Wind on his skin, claws on his hips, a mouth around his cock. Harry grunted and surged up, and magic slammed him back into the grass. Harry found himself gasping in satisfaction when a tiny, hidden stone cut into his back, and thrashed his head from side to side, as much to enjoy the dizzy feeling as to feel the way that Malfoy held him down, held him back, pinned him.  
  
“Be  _still_ ,” Malfoy said in a muffled voice.  
  
Harry let his legs sprawl further open, and laughed.  
  
*  
  
Draco couldn’t breathe, or think, or do anything but lick and suck and swallow.  
  
Never like this, of course not, wheeling on grass in the middle of a dizzy new world, surges of blood in his hands and surges of magic in his fingers and surges of anger and lust and wonder in his mind. Potter wouldn’t stop  _squirming,_ and he was so hard that Draco felt the erection jab him more than once in the gums. His jaw ached simply trying to get a grip. Draco pinned him down, and Potter writhed free again.  
  
 _He’s never had anyone to do this to him._  
  
Good guess or silent communication from him to Potter again, Draco didn’t know, but it made his belly swell with smugness. He sucked and then drew back, tongue lingering around Potter, holding him, until Potter seemed to notice the loss of sensation and drew his shoulders and head back and up to look down.  
  
Draco held his eyes, glaring, forcing Potter to see what he was doing.  
  
Potter threw his head back with a loud moan, and his hips squirmed again, a long buck with the full force of his body in it.  
  
Satisfied, Draco licked another sharp stripe up the side of Potter’s erection and lay back down, trying to find what would be comfortable for him and pleasurable for Potter at the same time. A few twists of his neck and bobs of his head, and he had it. Potter was moaning continuously now, and Draco wanted other people to hear the noise, wanted other people to watch the sharp nod of his throat, Potter’s anxiety, his red cheeks, his open trousers, his nakedness, his shame.  
  
Wanted them to look so that they would understand the red scratches and white scars that Draco intended to leave on Potter.  
  
 _I’m the one who did this to him._  
  
It wasn’t long, given Potter’s inexperience, before he tensed up in that final, permanent way, and Draco made himself relax in response: lightly clenched hands, long and empty belly, loose and open throat.   
  
Potter shrieked, and emptied himself.  
  
Draco coughed, surprised after all, his hands opening and closing and more of Potter’s clothes shredding before he could stop himself. Then he finished his gulping and rolled back and around, coming up on his knees. He didn’t move his hands, yet, even though he was in desperate need of being touched. He watched Potter, watched him come back to earth with desperate slowness and realize what had happened.  
  
A deeper flush took Potter from groin to face, but he sat up and turned around to look at Draco, and didn’t even try to hide the sated expression in his eyes. That was good enough for Draco—right now. He lay back on the grass and spread his legs, spread his arms, made himself totally vulnerable to Potter, to all appearances.  
  
Except both of them could feel the magic that boiled around Draco, growing knives and whips at a moment’s notice, and knew that he would never be vulnerable to anyone or anything on Hurricane unless he wanted to be.  
  
“Come on, then,” Draco said. “Or can your virgin mouth not do things that your virgin cock can?”  
  
*  
  
Harry hissed at Malfoy, and crawled forwards to yank at his trousers. Useless wondering how he knew. How had Malfoy known what Harry planned, high in the air, when they didn’t have time to exchange the subtleties of Harry’s plan to kill the bird?  
  
He made himself stop thinking about that. He pulled the trousers down and aside, but Malfoy’s pants were stuck under the arse he refused to lift, and wouldn’t come. Harry slashed a hand down, and his winds whistled under Malfoy, lifting him up and shooting down his pants so that they practically floated off.  
  
Malfoy laughed, a brief, startled sound, probably just because the winds tickled his skin as they slid along it. But he fell silent after that, and it was the kind of silence that made Harry look up from the contemplation of Malfoy’s wet red cock.  
  
He was watching Harry with his eyes gone the color of shadows again and his jaw hanging slightly open, and if Harry had no clue about what he was doing, at least he knew that Malfoy didn’t want anyone else doing it. He nodded stiffly back and bent his head. Then he had to wriggle further down, because it turned out that crouching beside Malfoy’s hip and trying to use his mouth from there wasn’t the best idea, after all.  
  
He stuck out his tongue, and he was still too far away. He scooted closer, and Malfoy gave a quiet huff of laughter. Harry gestured without thinking about it; the air shut around Malfoy in a tight, warm glove, and made him raise his hips and hump. Harry gave him a smile that felt as if it cut his face. “I can bring you off like this,” he murmured. “ _If_ you would prefer. I’m far more experienced at wanking.”  
  
“I want your mouth,” Malfoy said, and then looked as if he would have liked to cut his own tongue out.  
  
But it reassured Harry that at least he shouldn’t give up now. He released the wind and knelt again, and this time, he seemed to have the right angle. His mouth closed around Malfoy, and Malfoy reached out with a quiet, pained motion and laid his hand on Harry’s head, pressing down.  
  
The pressure was incredible. Harry had never known it would be.  
  
Then again, it wasn’t as if he had exactly dreamed of doing this. He had dreamed of tending Teddy and raising houses and planting crops. Not—  
  
Not hunting birds, and arguing with people, and sucking Malfoy.  
  
Harry’s tongue lashed down. He started to use his teeth, remembered, and held them back. He choked. He pulled his head away, gasped breath, and brought it down again, this time prepared for the full sensation of Malfoy nudging him in the back of the throat. Malfoy’s hand twisted and tightened, and Harry let his mouth sprawl open and his tongue dangle, touching and cradling and kissing.   
  
Malfoy grunted above him, and twisted in response. Harry didn’t meet his eyes, because he knew he would collapse, in one way or another, if he did. Instead, he sucked and sucked and sucked, and that seemed to be enough, because Malfoy’s thrusts became small and pointed, and more convulsive the longer he went on.  
  
Then Malfoy’s muscles trembled in a way that Harry had already learned to recognize. He let his mouth fall further open and sucked in a noisy breath before he sucked in Malfoy’s cock.  
  
Malfoy came fighting against his orgasm, as if doing otherwise would give Harry something to hold over him. Harry, who was less interested in holding something over him than in simply finishing this, surprised himself with a little twist in his stomach as he swallowed. And not the kind he would have expected, either, from finding the taste disgusting.  
  
He lifted his hand, and swiped it across his mouth, while he still watched Malfoy. Malfoy licked his lips back and forth as if what he had done reminded him of Harry’s taste, and they stared at each other.  
  
And it was too much, even if they were on the grass in the darkness and no one else had come along. Harry surged to his feet and made his way further from the door of Teddy’s house, swallowing the night air so that he could get rid of the taste. At least he no longer felt as if he would crumble when he strayed a few steps from Malfoy’s side.  
  
Behind him, he heard Malfoy rising, pulling his trousers back up and searching for his shirt. Harry had never taken his own shirt off, so it was simpler for him to rebutton and refasten. He did it with his eyes shut, trying to deal with the fierce feeling that surged through him, so hard, so fast, that he didn’t know how to name it.  
  
Malfoy reached out and took his wrist.  
  
Harry would have liked to snap his arm away and tell him that they’d given each other enough for the evening. But that would cause trouble with someone who his people still needed to survive. He made himself turn around and nod, keeping his face smooth, his expression as untroubled, as it possibly could be considering what they had done.  
  
“Good night, Malfoy,” he said.  
  
Malfoy didn’t release him, and didn’t move, and didn’t say anything. He just went on staring until Harry squirmed, and then he nodded. “Come with me,” he said, and turned away, pulling Harry along by the wrist.  
  
Harry pulled his hand free, but walked with him, because it seemed like less trouble than rebelling. He wondered whether they were going to tend the egg. Malfoy seemed like the type to turn immediately from fucking to business.  
  
“I’m sure it would be easier for you if I did,” Malfoy murmured.  
  
Harry snapped his head around and stared. Malfoy’s lips tugged up in a faint smile. “Yes, I can sense your thoughts,” he said. “How else did I know what to do so instinctively when you flew up to drive the bird down into my net? And you can stop gaping and thinking of this as an invasion of privacy. It’s happening.”  
  
“Why, I don’t know,” Harry said. “I know that we both have violent wild magic, but we’re not linked to Teddy in the same way—”  
  
Malfoy whirled to face him, spinning lightly on his heels. Harry danced back at once, and his vision of Malfoy’s face blurred a little as wind came up defensively in front of him. But at least it was nothing like it had been when he left Teddy sleeping, the tight, jangling tension that had demanded some return from him, some response.   
  
“I think we could be, someday,” Malfoy whispered. “But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we both have it, and the others don’t.”  
  
“Yet.”  
  
Malfoy smiled. “Say it’s that,” he agreed. “That doesn’t mean that what they gain will be anything like what we have.”  
  
“No,” Harry had to concede. He wondered for a moment what gifts or powers the Weasleys might develop, and then reminded himself that Ginny had fallen through a windstorm and still hadn’t manifested any of them.   
  
“Exactly.”  
  
Harry started, then shook his head. “Say that we have this  _association,_ then,” he said, because that was the most formal word he could come up with for it. “It’s already making other people uneasy, like Bill. Don’t you think that means we need to regulate or explain it somehow? We can’t survive on our own. We’re responsible to other people if we make them uncomfortable.”  
  
“We could live on our own,” Malfoy whispered, drifting closer. “Not the others.”  
  
And Harry saw the truth in his answer, or what  _felt_ like truth. He could hunt with Malfoy, and they would have more than enough magic to defend themselves, to bring food down, to make shelters that would sustain them when the storms came. They could do anything they wanted, and there was no reason to let the others hold them back—  
  
Harry snapped his head to the side and shook it, so that the last bits of the distracting vision had to leave. “That was all  _you_ , I know,” he said, staring off to the side, so he wouldn’t touch Malfoy again. “And I don’t agree with it. I don’t want to leave the others. I don’t want to leave Teddy.”  
  
Malfoy shrugged. Harry knew that along the same channels by which it seemed Malfoy was picking up his thoughts. “I want you to know that the difference exists between us, that the possibility is there,” he said.  
  
“Why is it so important?” Harry turned his head back part of the way. The urge to touch Malfoy, to punch him or hurt him, was subsiding, and since he could feel what Malfoy was doing anyway, it seemed weird to look away just to make a point.  
  
“Because we’re better than they are.”  
  
Harry controlled his violent response to that, and his response to the response, knowing all the while that Malfoy could feel both. Then he opened his mouth to actually  _answer,_ only to feel Malfoy’s hand descend over it and pinch his lips back together.  
  
“You know,” Malfoy whispered. “You feel the same. You’re impatient with all the things they ask you to do and all the questions they demand you answer, when they can’t understand the answers.”  
  
“I’m weary of the way they depend on me, yes,” Harry said, choosing his words carefully. No matter what Malfoy thought, words were still important, simply because they were chosen, and feelings weren’t. “But the answer to that is to stay and teach them to be independent, not abandon them.”  
  
“They won’t grow up,” Malfoy said, while his hand on Harry’s arm grew claws. “They won’t like me. They’ll never want me to be part of anything, and that includes a simple hunting partnership with you.”  
  
Harry touched the quicksilver current flowing back and forth between them, and knew that Malfoy would never let it be something as simple as that, not with the way that he felt about the Weasleys and even Teddy. He caught his breath, scrubbed at his face, and said, “Then we’ll work to change their minds.”  
  
Malfoy snorted.  
  
“No, it won’t take too long,” Harry said. “We have the rest of our lives here. We’re not going back to the wizarding world. And this is all part of survival. What else do we have to do? Why would we be wasting our time with it?”  
  
Malfoy shifted.  
  
“That’s not the way I think,” Harry said. “And since it seems that we have to put up with each other, what you think should matter to me, and what I think should matter to you.”  
  
Malfoy hesitated, then said, “All right. But I still want you to come with me tonight.”  
  
“Flying?” Harry leaned back a minute, and shook his head. “I don’t think I have the strength to take a broom up right now, never mind saving myself if I actually fell.”  
  
“No,” Malfoy said. “To sleep.” And he walked away from Harry, boots pressing down like iron pistons into the grass. Harry hesitated, and then followed, because why not? Malfoy would be gentler this way.  
  
And he might not be able to leave that easily, not without the tension between them sparking back to life. Since they’d sucked each other, the tension had calmed, and Harry no longer felt as if he were bound to Malfoy with stretched piano wires, trembling whenever either of them breathed. That sensation was worth preserving.  
  
*  
  
Draco woke to a snarl.  
  
He turned his head. He and Potter had fallen asleep in a nest of trampled grass near the egg, in the sure knowledge that Potter would feel a storm coming and wake in time to do something about it, even if they weren’t sleeping under shelter. Draco lay with his own legs folded and his arms cradled on Potter’s curved and folded legs, Potter’s flank beneath Draco’s cheek, and moving up and down with his breath.  
  
The one who had snarled was the werewolf, of course. Draco watched with distant eyes as he came closer and closer, his head lowered and his nostrils flaring as though he needed his nose to confirm what his eyes would already have told him. And perhaps he did, Draco thought. There was rarely a limit to the stupidity of Weasleys.  
  
“You,” the werewolf said, and nothing else. He straightened up and called, “Fleur!” without taking his eyes off Draco and Potter.  
  
Draco just looked back. He felt Potter stir to wakefulness beneath him with a snort and then stillness, and laid his hand on Potter’s hip, holding him. Potter stretched and bowed his head, and Draco felt the shifting of a breath beneath him, as though Potter was going to stand up, walk away from him, and try to excuse himself that way.  
  
Draco found a handful of flesh and pinched. Potter winced, but said nothing. Perhaps he had never intended to, Draco thought. Potter knew they had to work with what the wild magic was doing to them, not ignore it the way that the Weasleys probably wanted them to and not surrender to it completely the way that Potter already would have without Draco’s help.  
  
“What did you do to ‘arry?” That was Delacour-Weasley, standing there with her arms full of little girl and her eyes full of sadness.  
  
Draco smiled and answered, since he was the one the question had been directed to. “Nothing that he didn’t want to do. Nothing that the wild magic wasn’t urging us to do.” He had to admit he was glad they had clothed themselves before lying down together. That made one less thing for the Weasels to be appalled at. “Nothing that you and your husband don’t do night after night.”  
  
The surviving twin and Johnson had arrived in time to hear that. Johnson gave Draco a look of intense dislike, and drew her wand. Draco spread his hands with a  _snick_ sound that ought to warn them.  
  
Johnson stood still, then said, “I only want to check for influences on your minds that might have made you do this. That’s all. You can’t deny that it’s unusual, and that maybe there’s magic on Hurricane that affects the human mating process in new ways. This is something we all have to be concerned about.” She spoke slowly, and looked back and forth between Draco and Potter as though approaching wild animals.  
  
 _Perhaps she thinks of us that way, at that,_ Draco decided, and folded his hands down again. Some of the things the bond urged him to do with Potter were wild enough. Johnson swept her wand up and down, and frowned at the numbers and symbols that danced in the air. Draco was convinced that the Healers had devised spells that read like that, rather than in easy words, because they wanted to keep some things secret from “ordinary” wizards.  
  
 _Here, I’m the one who has the advantage and the power, no matter what her diagnostic charms tell her._  
  
The thought was as dizzying as the perfume from a rare flower. Draco licked his lips and smiled at Johnson, who stepped backwards and averted her face, but said, “I can’t sense anything on either of them. I reckon they’re just doing what they—want to do.” She made a little spitting sound at the end of that.  
  
Granger stepped to the front of the crowd forming around them. For a moment, she looked at Potter, but Potter only sat up and shrugged. Draco supposed that Potter didn’t have explanations that would satisfy his friends any more than Draco did, and had decided silence was the best option.  
  
Granger sighed hard and said, “Does it really matter, as long as they don’t have a fight and destroy each other, or us? I have seeds growing. Coming up already. The ones that you took up into the windstorm, Harry.” She nodded at Potter.  
  
Potter relaxed behind Draco, and Draco had to fight to keep from showing his teeth. He wanted to create that reaction—  
  
 _And perhaps you will, if you and Potter ever become friends. You’re not that yet._  
  
Potter flowed to his feet. “Good. Did you bring the meat back, then? Did you find all of it? How is Primrose doing?”  
  
Granger answered yes to the first question, and she and Potter moved away, talking, like the leaders they doubtless still considered themselves to be. Draco shook his head. Potter would have to learn the answers, but Draco hoped he would consider extricating himself soon.  
  
A glance showed that Delacour-Weasley was talking to her husband, and he had his head bowed enough to listen to her, which didn’t stop him from staring at Draco. Draco shrugged in response to the question in that gaze and faced the dragon-keeper as he came walking up, in turn.  
  
“How is the egg this morning?” Charlie asked, running his hands over the shell.  
  
Draco moved to join him, conscious of the stares on him, and Potter a good distance away in the camp, and the danger that was possible. But he reminded himself, again, that he had nothing to fear, not in terms of sheer power. It was best to remain wary, always, of what their companions might do, and of what Hurricane might do to them. But he wasn’t in the same powerless position he had been in the wizarding world.  
  
 _That alone is reason enough to have come here._


	13. Surviving

“I don’t know if I can stay here.”  
  
Harry stood up, blinking sweat out of his eyes, and stared at Primrose. She had come down to stand in front of him where he was laboring over the rows of sprouting crops in Hermione’s greenhouse. They had peas coming up, and potatoes, and large, bristling spines of maize that had a white tinge. Harry knew that it wouldn’t sate Bill’s cravings, but with the bird, and the pieces of it cut off and salted and preserved and roasted in the past few days, they had more than enough meat.  
  
“What do you mean?” he asked Primrose.  
  
She shifted from foot to foot like a pigeon and gave him a look that made him step over the rows of plants and lead her outside with an arm around her shoulders. Primrose shivered, and whispered, “The bird that you’re going to hatch from the egg. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to stand the memories the sight of it will bring back. I know that baby birds look different from their parents, I  _know_ that.” From the way her voice surged, Harry reckoned someone else had used that argument on her. “But we don’t  _know_ that this one will. And if it grows up, then it’ll probably look exactly the same.”  
  
Harry gave her shoulder a little squeeze. He should have thought of this, he decided, but although it was late, he could still give her a little help. “Then stay on the far side of the camp,” he said. “Help with the houses and the water collecting tanks and the watch against enemies.” It had seemed good sense, after the bird and the white creatures, to have two people watching at all times, or doing it while their hands did some simple task. “You don’t have to come near the egg.”  
  
Primrose stared at him. “But what happens when it hatches?”  
  
“Do you have anywhere else to go?” Harry asked quietly. “Do you know that, if you tried to walk to one of the other camps, the birds won’t find you? Or other groups of wizards could have been destroyed by the birds already. We don’t know.”  
  
Primrose grimaced a little, but nodded. “You’re right,” she whispered. “It’s just hard to think about.”  
  
“It is,” Harry said. “Go find something, some work, that will get your mind off it.” He gave her a little shove.  
  
Primrose looked back at him and laughed. “Is labor your cure for everything?”  
  
Harry shrugged and grinned at her. “Not everything, but it works for most things. And it gives you objects or tasks that you can feel proud of at the end of the day. Feeling pride is a good distraction for most emotions, I find.”  
  
Primrose nodded and walked away easily across the flattened earth that they’d packed down around the greenhouse. Harry watched her for a few seconds, until a pricking on the edge of his attention made him turn his head.  
  
Malfoy stood there with his arms folded and his gaze so steady that Harry squirmed in spite of himself. But he turned around and went back into the greenhouse, because no good could come of indulging this link that he and Malfoy had somehow managed to acquire.   
  
Malfoy came to the door of the greenhouse, and stood there. Harry kept his head bowed as he worked. He wasn’t afraid, but even now, seeds from Hurricane found their way into the greenhouses, and would overgrow their tender little plants unless carefully watched. Harry used his winds to dig around the roots, and then pulled them out with his hands.   
  
“You know that the werewolf is spreading rumors about me?” Malfoy asked softly.  
  
“Rumors that you have me under some sort of control, despite the spells Angelina performed to show we were clean?” Harry didn’t raise his head. “Oh, yes. I heard that one.”  
  
Malfoy’s jaw dropped open, as Harry saw from the corner of his eye. He smiled, and went on working.  
  
“You think that you should allow them to spread without counteracting them?” Malfoy said at last. “I’ll understand if you want to allow the Weasleys to reap the consequences of their own stupidity.”  
  
“They made—I mean, most of them made—a promise to forgive that life-debt Ginny owes you in exchange for politeness,” Harry said, using a little breeze to cool his brow. “If Bill keeps on talking about it, then sooner or later his family is going to remind him of that promise, and tell him to stop.”  
  
“He should have stopped already.”  
  
“Talk to Molly.” Harry shook his sweaty hair out to either side of his face so the drying breeze could reach it more easily. “She’s usually better at quelling her children when they’re being idiots than anyone else. Or talk to Fleur. She won’t want Bill to ruin the truce that holds everyone together here.”  
  
“You think I haven’t done that?” Malfoy made a single, concerted move forwards, then stopped himself and hissed. “It doesn’t work. And you were the one who promised me that you would stand up for me if they tried to undermine me.”  
  
Harry used a sharp shake of his head to get the sweat off, and straightened up from the rows. “I said that, didn’t I?” he asked. “Let’s go.” He strode towards the door of the greenhouse, expecting Malfoy to move out of the way.  
  
Malfoy stood still instead, and met Harry eye-to-eye. Harry glared at him. Their thoughts shifted and clicked in wheeling patterns, and Harry knew what would happen before Malfoy reached out and gripped his arms.  
  
“I shouldn’t have had to remind you of that promise,” Malfoy said softly. “You should do it simply because you need me, and more than the others.”  
  
“I need you to hunt,” Harry said. His jaw felt like it was the wrong shape for those words. “And to rear the bird, probably. But that’s not the same thing as needing you for everything.”  
  
Malfoy leaned closer to him. “Why did Primrose come to see you?” he asked.  
  
“Because she’s terrified of those birds,” Harry said, knowing Malfoy would read the truth of that answer through his sweat and the ridges on the palms of his hands even more than through his words. “I should have thought. If this bird hatches and becomes an adult, then she was afraid she couldn’t stay.”  
  
Malfoy gave a slow, contemptuous smile, and his hands dug in.  
  
“What?” Harry demanded. “You know that you would be pants at reassuring someone like her, someone you don’t know and think is weak.”  
  
“You have no idea what I like,” Malfoy said slowly, his fingers fanning up and down, and the claws spinning out of them, so precise a distance above Harry’s skin that they sliced some of the hairs on his arms in half. “You have no idea what I want, what I need, what I could thrive with.”  
  
“I thought this connection was supposed to tell us all that?” Harry slid flat strips of air under Malfoy’s hands and levered them off his arms. “The one that would make it possible for us to survive on our own? A fucking lot of good that would do us, if we were by ourselves and couldn’t communicate.”  
  
Malfoy straightened. His lips opened, but no air came out of them. Instead, he glared at Harry, and the thoughts in his head spun to the image of Harry choking as Malfoy’s claws curled around his throat.  
  
“If you want to,” Harry said, and stood waiting for the moment when he would strike, his whirlwind waking beside him.  
  
Malfoy drew his hands back with a little sniff. “Let’s go and make sure that the werewolf doesn’t cause the others to become even more unfriendly.”  
  
Harry turned without a sound and brushed past Malfoy. All the attempts at saying something were going wrong this morning.  
  
 _No. Not all of them. Only the ones with Malfoy._  
  
That was right. He had managed to convince Primrose, hadn’t he? And he had spoken with Hermione that morning about weeding schedules, and he had told Teddy the rest of his story, and he had helped Andromeda search for the source of the small stream that came down the hills near their camp into the pool, and all of those had gone well.  
  
 _The one I supposedly have the strongest connection with, the one I slept with, is the one that I can’t get along with,_ Harry thought, and shook his head. He wasn’t sure if he should think of that as his usual luck or the logical thing to happen when one insisted on sleeping with _Draco Malfoy,_ of all people.   
  
Malfoy walked beside him, and Harry received the conviction from him, strong as a burst of heat, that the answer was neither, that it was something else. Harry shrugged. They could stand there and think at each other, but that didn’t lead to understanding.  
  
*  
 _  
_“I’m going to insist that you don’t speak to him like that any longer.”  
  
Draco stood behind Potter’s shoulder, and wished he could be elsewhere, although small goads of impatience and desire had struck him all morning, driving him towards the greenhouse. And he’d had no choice but to go in once he saw Primrose enter. Soothing words and Potter’s full attention should come to him as a natural legacy of what he and Potter shared.   
  
He knew Potter did not trust Primrose more than he trusted Draco, but he had spoken to her more willingly, and Draco didn’t intend to tolerate that.  
  
But it had gone wrong again, nothing like the smooth, flowing bond between them when they had been in the air fighting the bird. Perhaps they had that bond only in a hunting context, Draco thought, or when fucking.  
  
There were worse contexts for it. But Draco didn’t intend to be satisfied with the paltry amount that Potter had given him, either.   
  
“You’re deluded,” the werewolf said, standing up from the mass of Weasleys that Potter had assembled.  _Only_ Weasleys, Draco noted; his aunt was taking care of Teddy, Delacour-Weasley watched over her little girl and learned healing spells from Johnson on the other side of the camp, and Primrose and Granger maintained the watch on the ridges. Potter thought red hair marked out one as a potential traitor.  
  
Draco’s only disappointment with that idea was that Potter had taken years to come to it.  
  
“Why am I deluded?” Potter met the werewolf’s accusation with anger as hard as diamond plates.  
  
“Because you slept with him.” The werewolf edged to the side. Draco turned the air in front of him into a whirling wheel of spikes, between him and Potter’s back. Potter stiffened, which marked him as the only one who could feel it, because the werewolf had continued, both his movements and his words. “That means you aren’t considering who he used to be, and what he’s done to us.”  
  
“You mean,” Potter said, his voice lengthening and flattening, “the way that he created meat to feed your overgrown appetite, and killed a bird that could have threatened us, and saved Ginny’s life?”  
  
The werewolf halted. Draco looked into those red eyes—yes, they had that shade to them—and smiled. He could kill Draco, but would afford him little advantage.   
  
He felt, as well, the snares of wind that Potter had set among the grass in front of the werewolf’s feet. That would be more of an advantage, to make him look stupid and disarm his arguments that way.  
  
Best of all would be to make him back off and shut up. But Draco did not think it possible, and in the wake of the impossible, he would take the best real answer.  
  
“I mean what he did to us back on Earth,” the werewolf said, and his hand came up to touch the glowing scars on his face. “You know that he was the one who caused this, Harry.”  
  
Potter started, as though his first name had grown less familiar to him. Draco smiled, and let his hand rest on the air, pushing his wheel of spikes closer to Potter’s back. That was true, wasn’t it? Draco thought of him as Potter, and Draco’s mind was the one closest to his own, in contact with it, working in concert.  
  
 _This is who he is._ Draco resisted the temptation to lean his chin on Potter’s shoulder, because he wasn’t eighteen anymore, and listened.  
  
“I know that no one is responsible for those scars except the one who clawed you,” Potter said. “I know that you’ve lost nothing because of them. No one thought you  _were_ a werewolf except people who would have arrested you anyway for being a Weasley, and my friend. Your wife said that she didn’t  _care_ how many scars you had, that she was going to marry you anyway, and she did. Blame Greyback. Not Malfoy.”  
  
Draco stood taller, and was glad that they had slept together last night. That eased the temptation that pressed against the barriers of his control, one that would have said he should take Potter away and fly with him.  
  
“He let them into the school, mate,” the original Weasel said, with a small frown at Draco. “I’d think you could acknowledge that.”  
  
“I do acknowledge that,” Potter said, with a motion of his chin that would have sliced things apart if he had the same kind of magic that Draco did. Since he didn’t, Draco saw no reason not to press closer and let the spikes slide under Potter’s shirt. Still Potter didn’t move, didn’t turn his head. “The same way I acknowledge that your families fought, and I beat Malfoy up on the Quidditch pitch in my fifth year, and he saved me from the Snatchers. They’re important, but the needs of the moment overpower them as history.”  
  
“We won’t survive if we split apart,” the dragon-keeper said, looking between them all and probably wishing that he was back with his egg. Draco caught his eye. He received a smile in return that the werewolf saw.  
  
“That’s true,” he said, in a voice with all of Greyback’s power in it, menace like an approaching storm. “That means that we need to cast out those who disrupt us.” And then he came for Draco, with a bound that cleared more earth than Draco had thought it would. Perhaps the red eyes and his voice weren’t the only lycanthropic traits that the wild magic had strengthened.   
  
Draco lifted his weapons.  
  
But Potter was there first, faster, his winds whirling out in front of him, unfolding in strings and threads and nets, catching the werewolf by his ankle and hanging him upside-down before anyone else could object. Then Potter raised him so he lay flat on the air, but his arms and legs could barely move. And Potter clapped his hands, with wind to carry the sound, so Granger and Primrose started on their distant heights and Draco heard a child’s cry.  
  
“That’s  _enough_ ,” Potter said, voice deeper, and prowled away from Draco to face the Weasleys. Draco considered going with him, the way that the pulling in his magic demanded, but thought it might seem weak, as if he was sheltering behind Potter. So he stayed still instead, and the Weasleys focused on Potter.  
  
“For  _fuck’s_ sake,” Potter said. “Malfoy has been nothing but helpful to us from the moment we accepted him in. He’s one of the main defenses of the camp. He’s the one who came up with the plan to save Ginny, and he’s the one who shredded the bird. I was hitting it with wind, but I couldn’t have killed it without him. And Bill has barely done any kind of work because his desires for meat keep distracting him. Now that he has the meat, he’s letting his desire to be the most important predator in the camp overset him. Do any of you notice this? Do any of you  _care_ that he’s the one who’s the liability here, and not Malfoy?”  
  
The dragon-keeper and Ginevra both winced several times throughout the speech, while the original Weasel stared at Potter as if he had never seen him before. The remaining twin and his father exchanged glances, while his mother rose to her feet. Draco aimed left. He could see the way her hand bulged around her wand, and if she struck, Potter was in the way of most of her spells. Draco would be the one to defend both their flanks.  
  
But it was the pompous servant of the Ministry who cleared his throat and said, “Harry’s right.”  
  
“ _What_?” said the werewolf from his position in the air.  
  
“He’s bloody well not,” said the twin, from which Draco deduced that he would disagree with the servant on principle, because his expression hadn’t said he thought that a moment before. “You aren’t considering everything, Percy. You know that  _your_ Ministry arrested Bill the most before we came here, and—”  
  
“What does that have to do with anything?” The servant turned around and folded his arms, usually a gesture Draco disliked because it made someone look defensive and weak, but his voice didn’t waver. “I chose to come with you. And the Ministry didn’t treat Malfoy well, either. Remember? They took reparations from him, and they would have taken more except that they got caught up in other kinds of corruption.”  
  
“Not corruption, to take from Malfoy what he should already have given after the war,” the werewolf said.  
  
“You shut up,” the servant said in a forthright way that let Draco see why he might have been appointed Prefect by the notoriously fussy McGonagall. “You haven’t controlled your magic. Or the werewolf traits, or whatever is making you act this way. You keep talking about the danger that Malfoy poses and how he can cut us apart in our sleep, but you’re the one who growls and tries to attack people. And Harry?” he added, because original Weasel and the twin were opening their mouths. “He used his magic  _precisely_ just now, and it wasn’t to hurt Bill. It was to keep him restrained. He even did it in a way that would make sure he wasn’t hurt or looked ridiculous because of the blood rushing to his head. Harry’s right. They’re keeping us alive, and Bill does nothing but pick even when they give him his precious meat.”  
  
He turned and faced the werewolf, and either everyone was still stunned senseless or, like Potter, they had figured out that it was better to keep quiet and let him speak, because he finished to a chorus of silence. “The wild magic is battering us, and we have to control ourselves, or it’ll win. And that’s—that’s it,” he finished, and trailed away towards the ridges, probably to relieve Granger on watch.  
  
Potter let the werewolf go, slowly enough that he came down to lie on the ground instead of falling. He immediately sat up and glared at Potter. Potter raised his eyebrows back, said, “You might consider taking your brother’s advice,” and turned away.  
  
Draco came behind him, and touched his shoulder. Potter jerked his head. “You know you don’t have to do that to get my attention,” he murmured.   
  
Draco nodded. Their minds still cast spells in unison. “But I wanted to,” he said, and traced his hand down again, along thick shoulder muscle and endless hard bone beneath that, into flesh where he dug his fingers. Potter hissed, and walked faster. Draco kept behind him until the point where the Weasleys erupted in argument, when he came up and walked at Potter’s side.  
  
“Why did the servant take my side?” Draco asked.  
  
“Percy?” Potter frowned into the middle distance. “Because he’s always been about rules. And I think it hurts him to the bottom of his soul that we’re making up rules for the wild magic as we go along, but still doing pretty well, while Bill’s acting as though rules don’t exist or are for other people.” He paused, then added, “It would help if you called them by their names, you know.”  
  
“I know,” Draco said. “I intend to reserve them when necessary for effect.”  
  
Potter nodded, and curved his path towards the greenhouses. Draco followed him, and ignored Potter’s stare when he picked up gloves. He gestured at the dirt, and it slid away. A few snips with imagined scissors, and he could pluck up the slimy weeds and fling them into the pile Potter had started. He needed the gloves so as not to sully his skin.  
  
 _Working in the garden?_ Potter thought, his mind turning in fast circles that resembled the track of a captured mouse in some of Professor Snape’s potions ingredient tanks.  
  
Draco slammed his shoulder into Potter’s gut, and went on working to the satisfactory sound of his wheezing.  
  
*  
  
“Aunt Hermione’s  _angry_.”  
  
At the reminder that they had an audience, Hermione stepped back, ran a hand through her hair, and sighed. “I’m just worried,” she said to Harry, in a lower voice, while Teddy ran his fingers through the water of a conjured bowl where a water-snake was apparently living, “that you’ve chosen the wrong person to align yourself with.”  
  
“ _Align_?” Harry shook his head at her. “Hermione, the point is to keep this from splitting into factions. Even Malfoy saving Ginny didn’t make a blind bit of difference to Bill. They needed to see that Bill was the problem, not Malfoy, and that he’s a problem in other ways, like how he kept demanding meat. I think Percy speaking up was the perfect solution, really. It brought them together and reminded them that someone who was of their family could see things differently. Malfoy needed a Weasley to speak for him.”  
  
“Such a distasteful sentence.”  
  
Malfoy stood in the doorway of the small house that Harry, Teddy, and Andromeda shared, his arms folded and his leg cocked. Harry scowled. He ought to have sensed him coming, but the bond between them was sometimes too subtle. All he had known for the last minute or so was that he had felt more comfortable than he usually would when he and Hermione argued.  
  
“Malfoy,” Hermione said, and gave Harry a significant look. “You know that this might not stop things.”  
  
“They can’t get worse than Bill would have made them,” Harry said, and stared her down when she opened her mouth to disagree.  
  
Hermione finally nodded, yanked her hair back into the sort of complicated knot that she used when she would otherwise let the anger fly, and stalked away. Malfoy leaned back to let her past, leaned out to watch her go, and leaned in to say, “There goes a woman who will never learn that some people don’t need her.”  
  
“It’s the same lesson I need to learn myself,” Harry said, and sat down on the dirt floor, watching Teddy play. He had turned from the bowls to his stuffed monkey, and was flinging its arms in different directions, making soft but high-pitched “eee, eee, eee” noises.  
  
Malfoy sat down beside him. He murmured, “We need stone floors here. Or wooden. Something more comfortable than dirt.”  
  
Harry didn’t intend to dispute about whether wood or stone would really be more comfortable. He gestured to the chair that sat in the corner nearest the half-window that showed aboveground. “Help yourself.”  
  
“I don’t wish to,” Malfoy said. “Because you don’t.”  
  
That made Harry feel as though Malfoy was touching him. To dispel the feeling, he said, “Did you talk to Percy after what he said?”  
  
Malfoy nodded, his face in shadow. “Thanked him. I think he was still bewildered about what he said, about what made him say it. He’d gone to Johnson to ask her to clear his mind of spells.”  
  
Harry snorted laughter in spite of himself. Malfoy leaned in and breathed on the back of his neck. Harry closed his eyes and murmured, “Not in front of Teddy.”  
  
Malfoy nodded, but didn’t move back as he whispered, “There’s another of the white creatures, come back with the first. They’re waiting for us near the edge of camp. When they saw me, the first one stuck out its tongue again, but wouldn’t come near. I think they want both of us there at the same time.”  
  
And suddenly Harry’s eyes were wide open.


	14. Messages

Draco tried to keep an eye on Potter and one on the white creatures in front of him as they walked over the crest of the small hill just in front of where the things had chosen to wait. The goat-creatures were still unknown factors; he and Potter had touched them last time only through the gloves and skins of wind that Potter had called up. Their tongues might be poisonous. Their bellows might deafen. They might have come to declare war on the camp. All unlikely occurrences, but Draco had known people to die from unlikeliness.  
  
And then there was Potter, who sometimes walked in tune with Draco and sometimes out of it, who bobbed and darted his head forwards and ignored the way that their minds strained towards one another.  
  
Draco sighed. Sometimes it was hard being the most sensible person in a camp full of Gryffindors.  
  
“They signaled me from a clump of grass,” he told Potter as they came down the last slope and saw the gleam of white ahead. “The one that we saw, first—at least, it was the one we saw from the way it stuck out its tongue.” Now that Draco considered, he wasn’t aware of what had made him so sure that the creature they’d captured once had come back. It simply  _seemed_ the same, that was all.  
  
 _And you less sensible than I thought you, than you were just praising yourself for being,_ Potter’s words whispered in his mind.  
  
Draco scowled, and hurried on. “It showed me it had another one with it, and then it made all sorts of gestures twice. Stuck out its tongue twice, stamped its front hooves twice, blinked twice. The nearest interpretation I could put on the message was that it wanted to talk to two people, and that would be me and you.”  
  
Potter nodded, his gaze fixed ahead, his legs moving in the same direction. Draco knew that he had gone into his mind in the way that Draco had seen him do earlier that day, when Draco told him about the werewolf spreading rumors. Focused on the task, the destination, no one and nothing else.  
  
Draco brushed their arms together.  
  
It worked. Potter shook his head, and came back to the world around him, instead of simply in front of him. He tilted his chin in Draco’s direction, acknowledging but not accepting or appreciating. It still stunned Draco that he could read those subtle nuances of emotion in Potter’s body language, but he knew their magic always chattered away beneath the surface, clarifying things that he wouldn’t know how to interpret otherwise.  
  
“We’re together in this,” Draco murmured. “And if we’re going to be negotiators for the camp, if we’re going to show them that I  _am_ valuable for more than an occasional hunt, then we have to keep that in mind.”  
  
“I always do,” Potter said, a faint, dark smile on his lips. “Being responsible for other people is the way I  _live_.”  
  
“But not for long,” Draco said, reaching out and trailing his fingers up and down the bones of Potter’s arm.   
  
Potter ignored that, and kept walking. The two white creatures stepped out to face them, and Draco blinked. He had no idea how their extreme whiteness blended into the golden grass, but it worked somehow. Perhaps it helped that they had wild magic that aided them in running and leaping; why not hiding, too?  
  
The second creature had large golden horns that swept back on either side of its face in neat curves, and large, liquid brown eyes. He edged closer to them, and Draco found himself looking hard for signs of intelligence in that goat-like face. Goats and sheep had never been part of his existence before this, except on his plate. It was hard to think of them as smart, however, when their stupidity and stubbornness was proverbial.  
  
The brown-eyed creature looked at him for some time, then put out its tongue. Draco exchanged a glance with Potter, and felt their mutual decision in that moment. He reached out with his bare hand, no wind wrapping it, and met the creature’s delicate forks at the end of its tongue with his bare skin.   
  
The creature shut its slotted eyes and bobbed its head, smearing Draco’s skin with its saliva. Draco shivered. Other than being cooler than normal, he really didn’t feel much about it that was different from the spit of other animals.  
  
Not that he would have admitted it to his parents, but he had sneaked off with Crups and Kneazles when he was a boy and let them lick his hands and face.   
  
Potter stepped forwards as the creature who had come to them the first time moved in, delicately prancing, tongue out. He extended his hand, and that one’s tongue licked up and down, in what seemed to be exactly the same movement as the brown-eyed one had used on Draco.  
  
Draco started to roll his eyes. Yes, they were trying to communicate something, but he and Potter had no way to interpret that in any particular direction.  
  
Then he froze as the saliva on his palm heated up, and two arcs of lightning sprang into being. Or rainbows made of lightning, that was what they actually looked like. One of them connected the two goats, and one of them connected him and Potter.  
  
And along those arcs flowed a torrent of magic.  
  
Draco could feel the grasses blowing past his body as he leaped. He could feel his legs curling under him, bearing him delicately up and down, his great heart beating in the front of his body at the same time. He could feel the others moving around him, swirling and schooling, avoiding attack from a flock of the enormous birds by simply being too many to strike.  
  
He learned a name as he swooped through their bodies, united by the sound of their running hooves. Not the same thing as they called themselves, because what they called themselves was part of scent and ear-flicker and lift of tail and clash of horn and other things that he couldn’t imitate because he didn’t have those body parts. But what he heard was an adequate substitute, because his ears translated the hoof-drumming, and the hoof-drumming was a real sound.  _Mummidade._  
  
Draco gasped and opened his eyes, only to find that the two goats—the two mummid—had pulled back from him and stared at him with bright eyes. He looked up at Potter, and Potter nodded, his brain absorbing the information from Draco and blurring it back until Draco was no longer sure which of them had had the first thought.  
  
“No wonder we couldn’t understand them the first time they came,” Draco whispered. “They need at least two of them to communicate, and that one was alone.” He looked at the one that had come the first time, and the mummid nodded. The one with the golden horns draped its neck across the first one’s, and Draco got a sensation of a push on the forehead from them. He stepped back, wondering if they wanted him to go.  
  
Potters squinted a little, and then laughed. “They discovered that we need names,” he said, “and sensations are the best way to communicate them. They’re trying to give us something to refer to them by.”  
  
“To  _them_ ,” Draco said. “Not just the first one we captured or the one with the golden horns.”  
  
Potter shook his head. “Because, given a choice, they would never come here alone, and this is the name of the two of them as a unit. It would be different if there were three, or if there was a different pair, or if one of them had come with someone else.” He paused. “And I think what they want us to call them is Hornlock.”  
  
Draco nodded, although his mind was still spinning, trying to make sense of an identity that was shared between two people and two people only, and would dissolve and split apart and enlarge if one of those people went elsewhere. Like a human family, except that a single human could be alone, and was a member of a limited number of families. The mummidade were not sentient alone, not truly, and their families were potentially in the hundreds, the thousands, or infinite numbers, when Draco thought of all the different combinations that one could get in a herd.  
  
“Why did Hornlock choose to talk to us?” he asked Potter, because Potter seemed to make better sense of the thoughts that Hornlock sent in words at the moment.  
  
Potter squinted at them again, and then his eyes widened. “Because we’re the only humans they’ve seen who are like them,” he whispered. “The only ones they’ve seen who are bonded by wild magic and don’t stand alone. They don’t—they don’t really understand that the others  _are_ sentient. They move around by themselves and don’t have connections to anyone else, and that makes them dumb animals, for the mummid.”  
  
Draco couldn’t help but shift towards Potter as he said that. “They think of us as a mated pair?” he murmured.  
  
Potter rolled his eyes at him. “ _If_ you’ll remember, the first time that Hornlock—half of Hornlock—came here, we hadn’t yet fucked. No. It’s not sex that makes the difference. I don’t think they form pairs based on sex, anyway, or not permanent ones. It’s  _magic._ Magic is the channel that lets them communicate, and what lets them move together and escape predators. I suppose they might be able to see that the others use wands, but it’s a different kind of magic than the mummidade use, and a different kind than rides the winds on Hurricane.”  
  
Draco leaned against Potter’s side, mimicking, for a moment, Hornlock’s posture by draping his neck over Potter’s. Hornlock danced, both bodies spinning apart, and then spinning back together to rear in front of each other, to touch their hooves and their horns together. They had much better balance on two legs than Draco would have expected, but on looking at them, he saw that that was probably magic, too, from the way their necks crossed and recrossed and the sly way they considered Draco out of the corners of their eyes.  
  
He moved in front of Potter and extended his hands. Potter grimaced, as though he thought Draco was grimy, but held up his palms facing Draco’s. They could do nothing about mimicking Hornlock’s horns.  
  
Hornlock bleated, and more magic came to Draco, bearing more messages. The taste of firm grass in the mouth and sweet water on the face—pleasure. The soaring feeling at the top of a leap, when the magic carried you and before you came back down and dodged to the right to escape a strike from a bird’s claw—exaltation, danger. Hornlock had come here as alone as they could, without the rest of the mummidade, though of course when they joined the herd again, they would become different people and would talk about it with their companions in different ways. They were being daring, and now Draco and Potter had understood them and justified their risk.  
  
And then Hornlock turned and bounded off, bodies perfectly in time, arching apart from each other as though someone had set off a firework under them and made them leap like that. Draco turned around, keeping his palms on Potter’s. He wanted to honor the last communication Hornlock made with them. He wanted to touch Potter, to feel the magic that connected them still beating strong and steady between them.  
  
He wanted to—do many things.  
  
It was his aunt behind him, who stared at him and then averted her eyes. “They’re saying in camp that you’re going to leave us,” she told Harry. “And Teddy is crying for you.”  
  
Potter shook his head and stepped back. “I’m not going to leave anyone,” he said.  
  
Draco followed him and touched him palm-to-palm again. “Then that should include me,” he said.  
  
Potter closed his eyes as if he was tired to death, and then stood there as if that would solve anything. Draco waited, ignoring the way that his aunt stared at him. He barely knew her anyway. Why should her approval or disapproval matter to him?  
  
*  
  
Harry would have liked to sit alone for a while, to settle the churning images in his head, and learn what he should do with them, and talk to Malfoy about what  _he_ intended to do, since that would influence how much Harry told the Weasleys.  
  
 _Of course you’re going to tell them everything. You won’t hide things from your friends, will you?_  
  
But the moment was too crowded, and he knew that he wouldn’t be given the hours alone that would probably be necessary to explain. He focused on the one concrete need, the only thing he knew for certain was happening right then. Andromeda had said that Teddy was crying for him, and Harry was still Teddy’s godfather.  
  
“I’m coming,” he said, and drew his hands apart from Malfoy’s, walking towards their house again. Andromeda scuttled in front of him, as though she thought Teddy would need the reassurance right before Harry showed up.   
  
Malfoy moved like a shadow behind him, and came into the house with him, ignoring Andromeda’s pursed lips and elevated eyebrows. Harry saw that, and decided that he was too busy at the moment to care. He knelt and held out his arms to Teddy, who scrambled up into them and clung.  
  
“Did you have a nightmare?” Harry asked him softly, settling back into a corner of the house and rocking with him. He could have gone to the rocking chair nearby, but Teddy acted as if he didn’t want Harry to move, digging his heels into the dirt and bending his legs. “What was it about?”  
  
“I saw you,” Teddy whispered. “I saw you  _go_.”  
  
Harry grimaced and rubbed Teddy’s back. The wild magic that had affected Teddy’s eyes might be enough to bring him the stupider, wilder hopes and dreams that coursed through Harry’s head, he thought. Especially the ones Malfoy had influenced, making Harry think about leaving everyone else so they could roam Hurricane on their own.  
  
With Teddy’s warm weight in his arms, and the way he shifted around on Harry’s hip to look up at him, those dreams seemed stupider than they ever had.  
  
“I promise, I won’t leave you,” Harry whispered, his arms tightening. “I’ll sleep in the same bed with you tonight. How about that?” He ignored the way that Malfoy shifted behind him, too. Malfoy could go to hell if he thought he had to be jealous of the time Harry spent with his godson.  
  
Teddy nodded. Already his eyes were falling shut again, and the clutch of his arms was a little looser. Harry kissed his forehead, stood up, and made his way over to Teddy’s shallow pallet. The easiest way would be for him to lie down on his side, with Teddy arranged next to him.  
  
Malfoy came with him, slinking along like a lion. Andromeda, who had withdrawn to stand near the door, spoke up then. “Harry. Is  _he_ really going to spend the night here with us?”  
  
“You can talk to him about leaving if you want,” Harry said. For once, he didn’t want to be the one who made all the hard decisions, who handled the task of speaking to Malfoy, when Andromeda was  _right there_ and could frankly do it herself. “But he’s your nephew, and I think you should get to know him.” He flopped down on his side and then lifted himself to get Teddy’s foot out from underneath his ribs. Teddy cooed and cuddled closer.  
  
Malfoy knelt next to the pallet. Harry tried to ignore him and the humming bond in his chest as he closed his eyes. This was weird, yes, and creepy. He knew that was how the others would see it.  
  
But it might also be something they just had to live with. Harry thought sleepily that that was the problem with the wild magic for everyone, they wanted it to play by the rules and respect their prejudices, and there was no sign that it would.  
  
Malfoy’s hand slid down his shoulder and lingered in the middle of his back. Harry suspected that was part of the reason sleep was already overwhelming him. He gave a mental shrug. So he got some better sleep than he usually did. He had a hard time seeing that as a negative of this bond tying him to Malfoy. There were too many other negative things to get upset about, without looking for them.  
  
*  
  
Draco knelt there in silence, observing the way that Potter’s face became normal, in color and expression, as sleep touched him. Draco had thought he knew the way Potter looked by now, but he must carry more stress than Draco was aware of. There was no other reason for his face to change as much as that.  
  
“I want you to leave.”  
  
Draco glanced up and smiled at the woman who lingered by the door like a nervous Bellatrix.  _Of all the contradictions I thought I would never see, that has to be one of the most interesting._ “Why, dear aunt?” he asked. “I’m related by blood to you and Teddy, and I’m Potter’s—companion.” None of the other words that he came up with seemed at all appropriate, although some of them would have been wonderful for annoying the piss out of Aunt Andromeda.  
  
Andromeda gave a stern little rustle and smoothed her skirts down. “Because you lower the tone of this house,” she began.  
  
Draco burst out laughing. The next instant, he muffled the sound to deep chuckles, not because of the color Andromeda’s face had turned but because he feared waking Potter and Teddy from their slumber. “Is that something anyone on Hurricane is concerned about?” he asked. “We left such manners and pure-blood social circles behind in the wizarding world.” Not to mention that there were too few of them to pay attention to things like cuts and snubs and ostracism, but if Andromeda hadn’t figured that out on her own, Draco saw no reason that he should help.  
  
Andromeda sniffed. “If you paid more attention to people other than Harry—dear Harry. He has helped us a lot, but he doesn’t look enough at the expressions on their faces, the people who surround us.”  
  
Draco sat back on his heels and regarded his aunt with more interest. It was true that her instincts, while useless for regulating social gatherings like the ones they were trained for, could help when it came to what the Weasleys were really feeling. They might say things to Andromeda that they would never say in front of Potter, and which Draco’s abilities were limited in letting him overhear. “I know that the werewolf doesn’t like me.”  
  
“His  _name_ is Bill,” Andromeda said stiffly. “And he has reason not to like you. You scarred his face.”  
  
“But didn’t turn him into a werewolf,” Draco said. “That never happened until he came to Hurricane, did it? And then it didn’t happen the first few days we were here, before I developed that wild magic and joined Harry. Strange that his control lapsed and he seemed to turn into a full lycanthrope exactly as I proved that I was worthy of trust.”  
  
“If that is what you want to call it.” Andromeda folded her hands in front of her and gave him a long stare. “I see more of Bellatrix in you than I do of Narcissa, no matter how pale your hair is.”  
  
Draco said nothing to that, precisely because he knew how much she wanted him to. “I still didn’t turn him into a werewolf,” he said. “If he wants to blame me for the scars, that I would have accepted blame for. But I’m not to blame for his craving for meat, or the fact that he tried to attack me even though he  _knew_ Potter was standing in the way. I’m not the one who made him look ridiculous. He did that, and Potter did.”  
  
Andromeda laid her fingers along her lips. “You have no idea what pressure Harry is under,” she whispered, as if she had only now remembered that the man whose honor she was defending was in the same room. “You have no idea how much you hinder him with the Weasleys, when he should be concentrating on them.”  
  
“He could have died under the bird’s claw, if not for me,” Draco said. “He might not have had the meat for his precious werewolf, if not for me. I’ve added to his survival, and to the Weasleys’. If they want to throw me out, then they’ll need to prove that they can survive without me.”  
  
Andromeda’s chin went up, and trembled in a way that Draco knew. He had sometimes seen his mother use that particular expression in front of his father, though never when she actually felt what it seemed to imply. Andromeda might mean it differently, though. “I will  _talk_ to them about it,” she said, and walked out of the room.  
  
Draco gave a dry chuckle, and lay down next to Potter. He listened to him breathe, and felt the tugging of the bond in his chest, the wild magic flowing back and forth between them. Trying to pull them closer, even though Draco knew they were as close as they could be at the moment without blending into one another at the level of skin and bone.   
  
Draco half-closed his eyes. He didn’t understand it completely, that bond. He only knew it was his ticket to belonging in the camp, and that he and Potter had their share of secrets. The wild magic that had affected Teddy. The way they hunted together—or at least how they felt when they did it, because explaining that to someone else was not yet possible. The way that the mummidade had come to  _them_ , not anyone else.  
  
Draco let his arm fall over Potter’s shoulder, his hand come to rest in the center of Potter’s chest, above Teddy’s hand and head. He shut his eyes, and breathed, and dreamed.  
  
*  
  
“I think we have to tell Hermione.”  
  
Harry hadn’t wanted to talk to Malfoy about the mummidade this morning at all, actually. He had wanted to feed Teddy breakfast and coax him down to the pool to bathe—Teddy considered baths fun as long as there was no faucet in sight—and then take his turn on the heights around the camp. But when he had awakened, Malfoy was there, and nothing would do but to invite him for breakfast.   
  
Malfoy had eaten his boiled grass, the strips of meat that Mr. Weasley had announced were safe as long as they were highly-cooked, and his water without comment. But he had risen when Harry had asked Teddy to go to the pool, and said he would come along.  
  
And now they sat on the shore while Teddy splashed around and shouted, and Malfoy had asked what they were going to do with their knowledge.  
  
“ _Have_ to?” Malfoy gave him a patient smile. “Who says that anyone else needs to know about it right now? Especially someone like Granger?”  
  
Harry kept an eye on Teddy, but felt his shoulders tense up. He breathed out to loosen them and shook his head. “I’m not letting you do this to me, Malfoy,” he said calmly. “Andromeda saw. And we should tell Hermione because she’s someone the others will listen to, more neutral because she’s not a Weasley, and someone who’s acted as a leader with me.”  
  
“They’re not going to accept me if you ignore the issue.”  
  
Harry turned and stared at Malfoy, who had leaned in towards him. “You think I don’t know that?” Harry asked. “Why did I fight Bill for you, if not because I know that the Weasleys won’t just wake up and accept you one day?”  
  
“I mean,” Malfoy said, his voice low and precise, “that trying to soften the news by having it come from Granger instead of me and you won’t work. They’re too used to being coddled. Pampered.”  
  
“If you think the lives they had before we came here—”  
  
“Not in that way.” Malfoy waved his hand as if he could wipe out all the Galleons his family had possessed. “I mean that they’re used to hearing all news from mouths they trust, and being told what to do, and when they have questions, someone soothes them. But there’s nothing that can make this soothing. The mummidade are sentient. The werewolf will be disappointed. We’re the only ones they’ll speak to. That will rankle, too. And the answers to their questions won’t make them much happier.”  
  
Harry hesitated. Then he said, “I thought they might at least give it more  _consideration_ if—”  
  
“We can tell them in turns, not all at once,” Malfoy said, peaceful but implacable. “These are the facts, Potter. It won’t matter what they  _consider._ Hurricane will go on having wild magic. The mummidade will go on being impossible to hunt and not understanding people who try to confer with them one on one.” He reached out and leaned his hand on Harry’s knee, making Harry gasp and leap as his skin seemed to acquire a wind beneath the surface. “The bond between us will still be there.”  
  
Harry swallowed. He wondered if Malfoy was giving him the best advice possible or if his longing to listen came from the bond.  
  
But he had to admit that they were stuck in a position where the only communication possible had to come from them, and that no matter how soothing Hermione was, someone would come angrily to Harry and Malfoy and demand that they explain themselves. Probably Bill, or Molly. They might as well beard the dragon in its lair.  
  
“Then let’s do it,” he said. “But  _diplomatically_.”  
  
Malfoy smiled at him. “We can but try,” he said, while his teeth bit the words off.  
  
“Uncle Harry! Uncle Draco! Look what I can do!”  
  
Harry turned to look and laugh at Teddy’s splashing spin-dance in the middle of the pool, conscious of the fact that Malfoy’s hand was still on his knee, and Malfoy showed no inclination to move it.


	15. Having It Out

“The goats call themselves mummidade, and they’re sentient.”  
  
Harry had thought he was prepared, after all. He and Malfoy had discussed which ideas about the mummidade were the most important to tell the others immediately, and they had waited half a day to see if Andromeda would mention them to anyone else. But although the Weasleys looked rather coldly at Harry and Malfoy from time to time—always excepting Ron, who was too much Harry’s friend, and Ginny, whose life they’d saved, and Charlie, who was too enchanted with the egg—they didn’t say anything about the goats. So Malfoy had suggested they speak just before the evening meal, when people tended to drift together around one central fire.  
  
And they  _did_ listen to the first line. But that was when Charlie jumped up and said, “I knew it,” in such a simply gloating tone that Malfoy snorted and Harry smiled before he could help himself.  
  
Maybe it was the snort and not Charlie’s words that set Bill off, but he sprang to his feet and addressed his brother. “You  _would_ be,” he hissed. “You would be happy that there’s another species of creature out there that we can’t hunt.”  
  
“Shouldn’t hunt,” Malfoy said. “Unless you’re advocating murder as well as loss of self-control.”  
  
Bill spun to face him. Harry sat up, staring. Perhaps it was because he had concentrated on Bill’s actions instead of his face so far, but he  _knew_ that the scars hadn’t looked that bad the other day. Now they stretched further than ever across Bill’s face, from his ear around his jaw and up the other side, and they glowed a ferocious white that made them look like hot iron. Harry reached out and grabbed Malfoy’s arm.  
  
 _Maybe we shouldn’t antagonize him,_ Harry thought, and knew the thought would be heard.  
  
 _He hasn’t learned,_ Malfoy said back, his voice flavored with a snarl that Harry thought Bill only wished he could make.  _Nothing will make him learn, not even public humiliation, until we make him talk it out and the others realize how stupid he is._  
  
“You’d know a lot about murder, wouldn’t you, Malfoy?” Bill asked softly, treading a few steps closer. His feet were bare, and Harry didn’t think it was for the same reason that Teddy kept running off that way. “When you turned on the school that sheltered you and let the Death Eaters in,  _that_ was murder. What one person commits, he really shouldn’t advocate against others doing.”  
  
“I don’t know about that.” Malfoy sat back instead of rising, eyes locked on Bill’s face. “Since you seem convinced that we’re going to betray you but you’re intent on doing it to us.”  
  
Bill said nothing, but Harry could feel the anger that shook him, tearing through him like the waves of wild wind tearing above the waves of wild grass. He took a long, slow step forwards, as if stalking Malfoy. Harry started to rise.  
  
Malfoy reached out and gripped his arm. Harry subsided. The magic was soaring around him, making the grass ruffle, and he could feel Malfoy’s extending from his left hand, but so far, no one had actually touched anyone else. Malfoy was probably right that they shouldn’t be the first to take it to a physical level.  
  
“How  _dare_ you,” Bill whispered in a rich, guttural voice. “As if I would want to betray my daughter. My wife. My family.”  
  
Malfoy smiled at him. “But I’m not one of those, and neither is Potter, and now I see that bringing you meat doesn’t make you think well of someone, either.” Abruptly, he rose, and Harry stood up with him before he knew that was what he’d planned. Maybe he hadn’t, and the bond had planned it for him.  
  
“The wild magic is changing you,” Malfoy said, leaning forwards. “But it’s changing you into something else, not the same kind of creature it’s making us, and you won’t control your excesses! You want someone else to do something instead. What, you don’t know. First the whole problem was lack of meat, and now you claim it’s lack of shared blood, but if that was the case, you’d be attacking Potter, too. But no, it’s really that you see us in control of our magic and you aren’t, and that infuriates you. But no one else can control this for you, you idiot. Do it yourself, or you’ll die, and probably other people with you.”  
  
Bill showed his teeth. Harry felt the stirring and pulling back of the other Weasleys for the first time. They had watched in shock as Bill went after him and Malfoy the other day, but they hadn’t thought that it was as bad as this. Maybe, now that Bill looked like an animal and Malfoy had provided them with the explanation, they were seeing the world the way it really was.  
  
“Bill.”   
  
That was Fleur, standing up with Victoire on her hip. She got between Bill and Malfoy and Harry. Harry saw Charlie stand up from the corner of his eye, and knew that was another thing that had changed. Before, none of the Weasleys had shown any anxiety about leaving Bill alone with his wife and daughter.  
  
“You are changing,” Fleur whispered to him, her accent thickening. “Theez eez not  _you_. You are giving up. I will not give up.”  
  
Bill looked at her with distant, savage eyes. Fleur only moved closer to him. Harry had his doubts about the wisdom of that, but on the other hand, he was certain he could snatch Fleur to safety before Bill hurt her or Victoire, if he tried. So he remained ready with his wind, and watched, and waited.  
  
“You know that Greyback changed me,” Bill said, with a snap of his jaws that let Harry see how the top one had moved out of alignment with the bottom one, as if extending into a muzzle. “You know what I am.”  
  
“What you were,” Fleur corrected him, as shining and unafraid as a phoenix. “Not what you  _are_. Theez eeez not you.” And she reached out and laid a hand on Bill’s arm as though willing him to feel her, instead of whatever paranoid fantasies he had concocted in his head.  
  
Bill started, and struggled, and closed his eyes, and seemed for a moment as though he would resist, as though he would explode. Harry watched. He still didn’t know if it would work, when Bill had kept attacking and fussing and whining through every attempt made to placate him.  
  
Perhaps, though, if they’d had Fleur with them in the audience yesterday, their confrontation with Bill would have gone differently.  
  
“I’m changing,” Bill whispered.  
  
“But you can control eet,” Fleur said. She shifted closer, and Victoire leaned over from her shoulder and watched her father with wide, round eyes. “I believe that. I believe what ‘e says, this Draco Malfoy. If ‘e can ‘ave wild magic and can control eet, then you can control the changes eet makes to you. You are strong.”  
  
Malfoy stirred at Harry’s side, and Harry knew that he disliked the implicit comparison Fleur was making. Harry leaned close enough to let his breath touch Malfoy’s cheek, and thought back,  _It’s only what you said yourself, in slightly different words._  
  
Malfoy remained poised on the edge of trouble for a minute more, then relaxed. His chin came down to rest on Harry’s head. His arm curved around Harry’s shoulders and dragged him roughly in. Harry tensed, then told himself it wasn’t  _really_ because any potential movement would set Bill off and he should stop acting as if that was it. He managed to relax and lean his head on Malfoy’s shoulder, as seemed to be required at the moment.  
  
Bill looked at his wife as though he had forgotten the rest of them existed. That was the best thing that could have happened, in Harry’s eyes. “But if I’m changing because of the bite, then I can’t,” he said.  
  
“ _You were not beeten,_ ” Fleur said, and seemed to have grown taller, the way Harry had sometimes seen Dumbledore look when he was angry. “You were  _scratched._ That eez not the same! That eez the wild magic! You will  _not_ give up!” Now she shook Bill, hard enough that he started to open his mouth and snarl at her. “The magic eez controlling your mind! Stop eet!”  
  
Bill flinched and cringed away from Fleur. He reminded Harry of a whipped dog.   
  
But whipped dogs could still bite. Harry leaned forwards, and knew Malfoy was doing the same thing on his left. He could also see Charlie edging around from the other side, but the knowledge that Malfoy was there was stronger, and quieted his breathing, turned his blood to a gentle flowing, made him less apt to leap or explode.  
  
After a long struggle, Bill said helplessly, “But can you help me learn to control it? Because I don’t think I can on my own.”  
  
Fleur smiled and brushed his shaggy hair out of his eyes. Harry wondered how long it was since he had brushed or cut it. “Of course I will,” she said, and held Victoire up so that she could kiss her father. “And Victoire, too.”  
  
Bill shut his eyes. For a moment, he stood there like a pillar of salt, and then he turned away, walking towards the greenhouses. Fleur kept up with him, and Victoire crawled into his arms, beginning some of the babbling chatter that she used in place of regular words right now.   
  
Malfoy stirred. Harry silently laughed at him.  _What, you really expected an apology?_  
  
Malfoy shook his head.  _Not that. But I did expect some kind of acknowledgment that we were the ones who had helped him to this realization.  
  
They aren’t going to be grateful to you. _  
  
Malfoy paused, then swung around to face Harry and offered him a dangerous, glittering mouthful of teeth.  _No, they aren’t, are they? Perhaps that makes it all the better that I have someone with me who_ will  _be._  
  
Harry would have answered, but Hermione turned around with a shake of her head and a sigh, and said, “All right, so you were telling us about these creatures that you call the mummidade. What do they want?”  
  
Harry found that he had more than enough of a challenge on his hands trying to explain to Ron and Hermione and the rest what the mummidade were and their unique concept of personal identity, without Malfoy cracking jokes in his head every few seconds.  
  
*  
  
Draco stood quietly behind Potter’s shoulder. At Granger’s request, they had come out to the edge of the camp again and would try to contact Hornlock.  
  
Draco didn’t think she understood that simply summoning the mummidade wouldn’t work. What could they do, think of them and hope the wild magic would carry the image to them? Hornlock had come seeking him and Potter, not the other way around, and hadn’t left any contact information.  
  
But it was still good to be away from the humming center of the camp, where the Weasleys asked each other silent questions about Potter and Draco and commiserated with themselves about how difficult it would have been to confront their werewolf. It was good to be with Potter, who stood with his arms folded and his frown harsh and silent.  
  
Draco touched his shoulder. He didn’t need to, not with the bond flowering between them and making them aware of each other’s emotional state every time they blinked, but it was still a luxury, and something he wanted to do. Two years since the war, and still he wasn’t used to freedom to move around. The Ministry and their attempts to imprison him were partially responsible for that, of course.  
  
Potter started and turned his head. “We’re supposed to be concentrating on Hornlock, remember?” he asked, barely moving his lips. Granger wasn’t far from them, scanning the horizon with one hand over her eyes, and the original Weasley had taken the opposite direction to scout, so it would have made more sense to speak silently. Draco held Potter’s gaze and smiled. Potter rolled his eyes. “We’re already making ourselves different enough from the others by being the ones the mummidade contacted.”  
  
“We didn’t choose that,” Draco said, because he was in a tolerant mood. “And if the others had wild magic, then perhaps the mummidade would have done the same thing with them.”  
  
“It’s a matter of luck,” Potter said, and then caught his breath. Draco saw why at the same moment. A gleam of white had appeared in the distance, not-there and then there against the golden-green grass. Potter shook his head. “I think there’s three of them this time. So it’s not Hornlock.”  
  
Draco nodded. That was hard to remember, that Hornlock could only exist if the same two mummid came to them; three would mean not Hornlock-plus-one, but an entirely new person.   
  
The mummid came walking on all fours, instead of bounding, flying, the way Draco knew they could, and by then Granger had seen them too and was murmuring and shrieking. Weasley had drawn his wand and taken up a protective position behind Granger. Draco felt a pang of sympathy with him. He was the one who had to hang back and support the excitable person in a crisis, the way that Draco had to do with Potter.  
  
Draco sneered and turned to face the mummid directly. If he was feeling sympathy for Weasley, then he had gone  _far_ too long without thinking about all the reasons there were to despise the redheads.  
  
The mummid in the lead was the gold-horned part of Hornlock, but neither of the two mummid behind him were familiar to Draco. He thought one of them might be female, since her stomach bulged and swayed. They stopped when they saw Draco and Potter and turned their heads to the sides, two to the left, one to the right.  
  
“Do you  _realize_ how important this is?” Granger was bouncing up and down in place, clapping her hands and looking as if she would have given everything for a piece of parchment and a quill. “This is the first time that wizards have ever met non-humans who could speak to us! I have to—”  
  
“Except the centaurs,” Potter said, apparently without taking any of his attention from the new mummid, “and the merfolk, and the goblins.”  
  
Granger stopped bouncing and started blushing. Draco smiled in spite of himself. Sometimes it was nice to have a partner who had these intricacies of friendship among the Gryffindors, because he was the only one who could make them actually stop in their tracks.  
  
Weasley smiled, too, but he cut off the smile when he noticed Draco was watching. That pleased Draco, because it meant  _he_ was the one who could turn his head loftily away, and seem gracious instead of pissy.  
  
The three mummid arranged themselves in a triangle formation, the gold-horned one in front, the other two an equal distance behind him and from each other. Then the gold-horned one stamped his front hoof and extended his tongue. Potter went forwards to meet him, and Draco followed, wading through the grass. So much of it had been trimmed short around the camp now that he had forgotten what a chore it could be to walk in it.  
  
They knelt down in front of the mummid. The gold-horned one shut his eyes, and his tongue’s two forks split, one extending straight ahead to touch Potter’s hand, and one to the side to catch Draco.  
  
Draco blinked, wondering why the mummid hadn’t joined themselves together, but reasoned that they probably knew each other and had done the necessary linking before they showed up. He accepted the touch of the saliva on his hand, and used the other to brace himself against Potter’s shoulder as they knelt there.  
  
Potter shut his eyes and moaned aloud when the power flowed into them this time, like grounded lightning strikes. Draco licked his ear before he thought about what he was doing, and then the mummid’s communication swept him away in the same direction.  
  
He could feel the leaping, the grasses whispering past him, stroking his skin, touching his hooves, making his horns weigh less than they really did as sparks of magic danced out from the grass onto his head. He concentrated, and spoke the best translation of the name aloud before Potter could. “Grassgifted.”  
  
He leaned back, and Potter did the same thing beside him, giving him a look that briefly made Draco wish they were alone. But Granger seized the name and dropped to her knees in front of Grassgifted.  
  
“Will you speak to me?” she asked. “Please? I know that you don’t really think of me as intelligent, but I  _am_.”  
  
Potter snorted. “They don’t understand English, Hermione. And your communication would be as limited and hard to understand as the first part of Hornlock’s was for us when Charlie captured him.”  
  
“What about if I joined with Ron?” Granger reached up and back to Weasley’s elbow. “If we cast a spell at the same time and they saw that we’re a pair, too? Then they might change their minds.”  
  
Grassgifted turned their heads in multiple directions, and Draco snickered a little at the puzzlement coming from them. Granger and Weasley now stood together like a pair to be acknowledged, but Grassgifted could still feel no magic from them. “It’s not going to work unless you can bond with the magic of Hurricane,” he told them, and gave in to the temptation to lean his chin on Potter’s shoulder after all.  
  
Granger frowned. Draco watched her as her brain ticked through a few different possibilities, and still came to none of the ones she wanted.  
  
“We’ll have time to speak to them, Hermione.” Weasley petted her hair and looked at the mummid. “For the moment, why don’t we leave Harry and Malfoy here and let them do what they said they would? I’d rather go work in the greenhouses.”  
  
Granger tilted her head up stubbornly. “I want to listen.”  
  
Weasley sighed, kissed her head, and walked down the hill. Draco managed to catch his eye as he went, and nodded to him. Weasley blinked; then suspicion flooded his face, and he renewed his grip on his wand.  
  
Draco concealed a sigh. He was beginning to doubt the truth of Potter’s proclamation that he would have no trouble getting along with the Weasleys, if he only gave them enough time to accept him. Let him  _try_ to extend a good-natured hand and he would only receive stares like this in return.  
  
“It’s going to be boring, Hermione, really,” Potter said, as he arranged himself into a more comfortable position on the earth in front of Grassgifted and Draco joined him, slinging an arm over Potter’s shoulders to stake his claim. “We’ll speak in our minds. They communicate by magic, the same way they do everything.”  
  
Granger sniffed. “They can’t do everything by magic,” she said, and pointed to the bulge in the female’s belly that Draco had noticed himself. “Which means they might make some sounds or gestures that I can interpret.”  
  
 _Don’t argue with her,_ Draco murmured to Potter, and took Potter’s chin in his hand, liking the way that it fit his palm.  _Look at the mummid with me. I think Grassgifted came to us for a specific reason, and not because we called._  
  
Potter sighed his agreement, and focused. All three of Grassgifted knelt down, apparently to make themselves more comfortable or perhaps imitating Draco and Potter, and the communication began to flow between them again.  
  
Draco saw a flock of the birds wheeling overhead as the mummidade fled through the grass, and the sight made his stomach heave. There were more birds than he had thought could exist on Hurricane, and they flew faster and had bigger claws than the weapons he could summon. He was starting to think that he and Potter had been lucky in their choice of bird to kill. It had been a small one, and not as aggressive as some of them could be.  
  
Two of the birds struck down and snatched out pieces of the mummidade. Every mummid they took destroyed people forever; the pairs and trios and larger groups they could form could not exist without the dead individuals. The birds circled away, already snatching off horned heads and digging their beaks down their necks to eat out the insides, but more took their place, and the air was full of the clash of wings and leaping magic and the fear. The mummidade milled and soared and turned in multiple directions, but the birds’ magic blew them back into each other, ruined their leaps, turned their neat jumps into tumbles.  
  
Grassgifted hammered Draco with images of the dead and dying until Draco wanted to break free of the link to clear his head, and then stopped. Draco opened his eyes to the sunlight again, and looked at Potter. “Do  _you_ know what they were trying to prove with that?”  
  
“Not prove, not that so much,” Potter said, looking thoughtfully at Grassgifted, who stared steadily back with all three of their heads at the same level. “But to propose. They want us to be their allies, to fight against the birds.” He ignored Granger’s harsh squeal.  
  
“We barely destroyed one,” Draco said, and looked at the mummid. Their eyes looked somewhere exactly between him and Potter, and he was sure Grassgifted saw the expressions on their faces, although they probably didn’t understand them. “How are we going to do it again, on birds that are that numerous?”  
  
“I might have an idea,” Potter said, and took firm hold of Draco’s hand. Draco let him do it, because what else did he have to lose? They were already joined by the magic and in the eyes of the mummidade.  
  
Potter closed his eyes and let forth a warbling, spilling wind that twined around Grassgifted. Their eyes widened, and Draco knew what they were thinking about immediately, if only because it was what Potter was thinking about.  
  
“You can’t use the wind that way,” Draco said.  
  
“Why not?” Potter eyed him. “The birds’ magic is in the wind, and that’s one reason they can deter the mummidade, because it’s stronger than the magic in the grasses that they take advantage of. If I can manipulate the wind—”  
  
“Not that much,” Draco said. “Not by yourself.”  
  
Potter opened his mouth to argue, but Draco pressed a hand on his shoulder, and Potter fell silent, staring at him. Draco shook him a little. “Just  _listen,_ for once in your stubborn life,” he said. “The mummidade are offering us a long alliance. Not for one plan. Not for spending all our effort and time on one chance that might or might not work. This happens several times a year, I think.” He had no idea how he knew that, but it was true that the fragmented images that Grassgifted had given them had shown the grass in different colors than the gold and green that seemed to ornament Hurricane’s spring. “We can’t do it once and expect to take care of all the birds. More would come.”  
  
Granger opened her mouth to say something, but Draco looked at her, and she shut up. She still vibrated with the desire to speak, but Draco thought she would probably leave him and Potter alone for the present.  
  
Potter nodded, at last. Draco smiled at him. “But we can accept the alliance, and tell them that we’ll help defend them from the birds,” he continued.  
  
“Really?” Potter cocked his head. “The others might object to that. Or at least to us being the ones to accept it.”  
  
Draco flicked a claw lightly up and down the side of Potter’s neck, enough to dent the skin but not draw blood. “They’re already desperate, and they resent having to depend on us. But they have no choice, here, because we’re the only ones that the mummidade see as being like them. If they become our allies, then they might bring benefits to us, too.”  
  
Potter spent a long moment repeating the images that Grassgifted had given them, images that showed no way the mummidade could help humans, but Draco reminded him that these were not the only mummid they might negotiate with, and in the end, Potter sighed and turned back to Grassgifted.  
  
He and Draco used the same image, of warm, drowsy sleep in the morning, to signal their pleasure and acceptance in the offer.   
  
Grassgifted rose at once, in a trioed leap, and vanished into the grass. Potter blinked, then laughed. “On their way to tell the rest of the herd.”  
  
Draco nodded. “And now we should tell the rest of ours.”  
  
“Yes,” Granger said, and shot to her feet. “You should.” She was already marching towards the camp, hair flying behind her like a flag.  
  
Potter grimaced. “Because that’s gone  _so well_ so far,” he murmured, but let Draco pull him to his feet.


	16. Internal Politics

“I think you might have gone too far this time.”  
  
That was Hermione, but Angelina and Ron and George and Percy were nodding in echo of her. Harry leaned back with his arms folded, and then winced and straightened up as Malfoy’s magic seemed to poke him in the back. It was inconvenient, much of the time, how Malfoy could speak to him or touch him or influence him and  _no one would bloody notice._  
  
“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I only thought that the mummidade were offering an alliance that they might not offer again, and we could use the help to survive.”  
  
“If they’ll give us anything.” Hermione smoothed one hand over and over down her hair, which was coiled in a long braid beside her. Harry thought she wasn’t cutting her hair specifically because it let her do this one gesture when it was long. “We don’t know yet that they mean for us to do anything but defend them against the birds.”  
  
“If they don’t give us anything, then we won’t help them.” Malfoy shaped his words like thrown knives.  _He doesn’t care where they land, either,_ Harry thought as he watched more than one person across from them—everyone except Bill, Fleur, and Victoire, who were still off by themselves—flinch or stick their lips together. “That’s the kind of bargain it is. We can’t afford to give help that isn’t reciprocated.”  
  
“But it would be easy enough for them to wait until we’ve helped them with the birds and then vanish into the grasses,” Ron pointed out, with a steadiness of temper that Harry had to commend him for, since he hadn’t stopped glaring at Malfoy since everyone had gathered in Harry and Andromeda and Teddy’s house. “How in the world are we going to track them?”  
  
“Wild magic,” Malfoy said, and looked at Ron as if he meant to pity him.  
  
“Which  _not everyone has_ ,” Ron said. “That’s the point, Malfoy, the point that I don’t think  _you_ get. Because you’re strong, you think that’s enough. But we all have to survive together, and the rest of us don’t like being left out of the decision-making that you and Harry do.”  
  
“Admirably put,” Percy said, and nodded at Malfoy. “You know I defended you from Bill because I think you’re necessary to our survival. But you aren’t the whole of it. We have to know that our contributions are being valued, or we’re just as likely to break apart and drift away as Bill was.”  
  
Percy still talked like a Ministry pamphlet sometimes, Harry thought, but he made a good point. He glanced in silence at Malfoy.  _How are we going to answer them?  
  
Together._  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. That wasn’t how he had meant his question, but he respected that Malfoy was only telling the truth from his perspective. Any attempt to separate them would be one that Malfoy resented and the Weasleys would pay more for than it was worth. Harry made sure he was exactly as close to the Weasleys as Malfoy was and then began to speak.   
  
“We want to have a part in the politics here,” he said quietly, letting his eyes travel from face to face. “Not the whole thing. I don’t  _want_ as much responsibility as I’ve had, frankly. Maybe I was the only one who could persuade the lot of you to emigrate—” although Harry suspected the impulse had come mostly from the fact that Ron and Hermione wouldn’t let him go alone, and where one Weasley went, the others followed “—but that’s a job I can let go of now that we’re here. We need to work together, right. Then I can give up the responsibility of making decisions for everyone, and you can have some of it. That’s the right solution. That would make everyone happy.”  
  
“Except Malfoy,” Percy said, and his face had come alive in a way that Harry had only seen before when he was discussing the rules and traditions of Hogwarts as a Prefect. “That’s the point, isn’t it, Harry? You would probably have asked our permission and not tried to set yourself up as a negotiator with the mummidade if not for him. But because he’s here, the bond and the wild magic are changing you.”  
  
Harry felt the snarling bristle beside him, and didn’t bother looking at Malfoy. He could  _feel_ the expression on Malfoy’s face sliding up his own veins, coming out on his own face.  
  
“The wild magic is changing  _all_ of us, you idiot,” said Malfoy. Since they were the words Harry would have spoken, other than the insult at the end, he kept quiet, and Malfoy prowled forwards, his body hunched and his head thrust out like a predator’s. Harry put his hand on Malfoy’s shoulder and felt the power thrumming along. He wanted to lean his cheek on it and feel it supporting him, but in the meantime, he watched the Weasleys’ faces instead. “It affects us more prominently, because of the way that Potter had it before he came to Hurricane and because of the life-debts that we owe each other.”  
  
Harry blinked. That was a way of looking at it that hadn’t occurred to him. But he would need time to ponder it, and he could already feel the way that Malfoy’s mind reached out to his, curling around him like a whip of spikes, touching and binding, promising comfort and explanation later. He waited.  
  
“Your—brother has been affected, too,” Malfoy continued, and Harry knew that he had barely avoided saying “you werewolf.” “Now you know that. And you’re changing, I’m sure, though you might not have noticed yet. The change that happened to your brother wasn’t subtle, but you excused it as belonging to something else for a long time. What else have you felt or done that isn’t something you might have felt or done back in the old world? And what have you attributed to something other than the magic?”  
  
Harry noticed that both Ginny and Hermione sat up, and made a mental note to ask them later. Malfoy’s will rose up against that, but Harry thought it important enough to ignore the impulse to agree, this once. They needed to know who else in the camp could speak with the mummidade, if nothing else, and if they didn’t have bonds like that yet, they might have to encourage the formation of some of them.  
  
 _That would also necessitate the way that you think of our bond changing.  
  
We were enemies a short time ago, and no one else looks inclined to fuck someone other than their wives or girlfriends, _Harry snapped back, and Malfoy laughed in the back of his throat, in the back of his mind, his claws stroking around Harry’s throat and spine.  
  
 _We will talk._  
  
Before Harry could retort, Malfoy continued. “We’re all changing, but we are the ones who have changed furthest and fastest, and come closest to Hurricane’s native creatures in the process. That makes us the best negotiators with them, right now. You can change and come closer, I think. But if you insist that we should give you that power and that specific task when you haven’t shown that you can do it yet, then it’s ridiculous.”  
  
“The mummidade might speak to you,” Percy said, his eyes still brilliant, “but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t talk about the alliances that you make, and the aid that you promised.”  
  
Malfoy smiled. “Unless the rest of you are  _experts_ at hiding your gifts, then no one else has the ability to kill the birds yet. Potter and I are the ones who would do it, no matter what the rest of you agreed on.”  
  
“Harry?” Percy turned to look at him. “He calls you by your last name, and stands there with this smug look on his face whenever he mentions you. Does he speak  _for_ you? I mean, is that really the kind of thing you want him to say, and are you standing at his side because you really agree, or just because of the magic?”  
  
 _He’s not speaking like a Ministry pamphlet now,_ Harry thought, and took a deep breath that passed through thorns on the way up his throat.  
  
Malfoy didn’t speak in his head. He simply watched, and Harry knew that his answer right now could change things, could destroy things. He shuddered for a moment—  
  
But it was the same power he had always had, ever since he had found out that he could wield the wind. This was only a different form of it.  
  
He paused for a moment, to bid farewell to the simplicities that had still constructed his life even after he came to Hurricane, and said, “He speaks for me. We both made the alliance, even though I questioned doing it, and he’s right that we would be the ones defending the camp and killing the birds the mummidade want us to slaughter. We’re—we’re bonded. We don’t always  _agree,_ between ourselves, but in something like this, we’re always going to be on the same side.”  
  
And he reached out and put his hand on Malfoy’s shoulder, in time to feel the bond between them purr like a leopard.  
  
*  
  
Draco would very much have liked to go off alone with Potter just at that moment.  
  
Not to fuck him. But because he wanted to look into his eyes and repeat his words back to him and  _make_ him acknowledge what he had done, what he felt, that he had finally made his decision and claimed both Draco and the bond.  
  
But there were Weasleys to convince, and although a few of them looked sufficiently shocked into silence, the Ministry lackey still spoke. “Then you have to remember that the rest of us are here, that’s all,” he said, his face more pointed with challenge than Draco had ever seen his own, even in a mirror when he was young. “And you have to remember that the alliance with the mummidade can change.”  
  
“How?” Draco asked, because Potter still looked reluctant to speak against any Weasley whatsoever. And he had said in their hearing, and couldn’t take back, that Draco spoke for him. “How are we going to change it?  _Why_ would we change it? Do you distrust them that much already, to think they would make the alliance and then try to win labor from us without doing anything in return?”  
  
The lackey shook his head. He had turned to Draco and looked him in the eye now, rather than with his nostrils. “It’s not that. If we decide we want something else from them, though, then you have to negotiate with them in good faith. Not just tell them what you want to say, and pretend that you’re hearing what you want to hear.”  
  
Draco stretched, and let his claws fan out from his hand to cut several blades of grass nearby. More than one Weasley jumped. Not the sister, though; Draco noticed her watching him carefully, as if she would work out a way to acquire wild magic from that. Draco smiled at her and smirked at the lackey, to let everyone else know the difference.   
  
“The raw  _fact_ is that only we have the power to communicate with them,” he told the lackey. “That’s what troubles you, I think. Not relying on the mummidade and the alliance with them when you think they may change their minds. Relying on  _us_.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” said the lackey, which at least increased Draco’s estimation of him. He knew when there was no point in maneuvering subtly when Draco had begun the contest bluntly. “You were a Slytherin until recently—”  
  
“Stop thinking in terms of Hogwarts Houses, Percy.” Potter stirred beside Draco, and the power that hammered through him made Draco want to reach out and caress him again. He refrained because of Potter’s sensibilities, not the Weasleys’. “You have plenty of reason to hate Malfoy without that. We might as well talk about  _those_.”  
  
The lackey nodded. “You’re right. What he did to Bill. What his father did to Ginny. And what his family did to all of us in the war.”  
  
“There’s a lot less personal there, unless you’re also going to count all of the Death Eaters as harming your family.” Potter looked inclined to simply charge and scatter them all, and Draco felt the pressure of a breeze on his hair. “Give up on it, Percy, honestly. He’s saved Ginny’s life and paid back the debt that Lucius owed her, and Bill needs to calm down and get control of his wild magic before any of us will know what happened as a result of his scars and what was Hurricane. And your mum killed his aunt, but you don’t see Malfoy holding grudges over that, do you?”  
  
 _Because my aunt was mad and I wanted to kill her myself,_ Draco could have said, but there was no reason for him to utter such shit when Potter was speaking. He leaned hard enough on Potter’s shoulder that the idiot had to support himself with wind, and waited.  
  
The lackey nodded, as though it was a good point that hadn’t been brought up before. “That’s true. But it still makes him hard to live with, hard to trust.”  
  
Potter managed to exude disdain without once changing the position of his body. Draco had to admit that took talent, and he licked his lips without meaning to, edging a bit closer to Potter. “If I’ve managed to accept this bond to him without screaming about my lack of trust in him, perhaps you could put up with an alliance?”  
  
The lackey flushed and looked back and forth between them in silence. Then he bowed deeply and said, “I’m sorry, Harry. That was unworthy of me. I should have thought—and we  _did_ make a bargain with him to forgive the life-debt that Ginny owed him if we didn’t remind him about his past anymore. I’m sorry, Malfoy.”  
  
Draco simply stood still and stared at the lackey, who flushed a brighter red and hurried towards the greenhouses as if he remembered a new errand. Draco wanted to shake his head, only everyone around him, except Potter, would interpret that gesture the wrong way. It seemed that some Gryffindors really did exist who played by the rules of logic alone and could regulate their emotions by it.  
  
“Percy doesn’t speak for all of us.” That was the Weasley mother, standing up with her arms folded. Looking at her, Draco found it hard not to see the woman who had killed his aunt. “I don’t think that we should trust someone like him, Harry.”  
  
“But you chose to,” Potter said. “You chose to have him here for weeks without driving him away, and you said that you wouldn’t harass him because of how he saved Ginny. You didn’t keep that promise.”  
  
The Weasley mother flushed, but didn’t back away, which showed that rules of logic were of less use with her. Then again, Draco had never believed they would go  _that_ far. “You’re not thinking straight, Harry,” she said softly. “You don’t know about the history between us, or how hard it is for us to see  _you_  tangled in a bond you didn’t choose.”  
  
Draco said nothing, although he could have and Potter would have accepted it, because he was curious to see Potter’s response for himself. He watched him out of the corner of his eye and with the bond, and waited.  
  
*  
  
 _How many times am I going to have to fucking say this?_  
  
Harry sighed. At least he could hope it would get easier each time, the way that thinking about Dumbledore being dead got easier each day.  
  
“He’s bonded to me,” Harry said. “I didn’t choose it, but we didn’t choose a lot of things about Hurricane, including the birds and the mummidade. That doesn’t change a thing when it comes to the fact that we  _did_ choose to freely come here. We have to put up with what we found. I have to put up with Malfoy.”  
  
Malfoy shoved him, hard. Harry recovered his balance and didn’t look at him. He knew they would be having words about that later, but it was the best comparison between their solution and the Weasleys’, and he wanted this constant reassurance and placation to stop. He could say that he trusted Malfoy again, and again, and it still didn’t seem to convince them.  
  
 _Then you have to say it again and again, just like you needed to labor to survive here. It’s part of the labor of survival. You chose to come here. That means you have to make it work._  
  
“My poor boy,” Molly whispered. “I wish that you could have lived  _happily_ ever after, and now it looks like you won’t.” Her eyes went misty as she looked at him.  
  
Harry wanted to bow his head and bang it against a wall, although the wall in this case was Molly. That fear went straight back to Harry announcing that he was going to help Andromeda raise Teddy. Molly had been concerned the task was too much for Harry when he was so young, and she had also expressed a fear that he wouldn’t ever have children of his own.  
  
But Harry was doing it, and he thought he was doing a pretty good job so far, if not a perfect one.   
  
“You’re making it harder,” he told Molly.  
  
He saw her blink and look at him uncertainly, which made a nice change from the constant, self-assured stare. “What?”  
  
“You’re making living here harder,” Harry said. “Just like you made raising Teddy harder when you said I was too young for it. And now you’re making being bonded to Malfoy harder. Yeah, I wish that Remus and Tonks were alive and could raise Teddy, too. And I wish that I had a choice about the bond. But things have become this way, and we have to live with the consequences.  _Please_ stop telling me how much you regret it, because I don’t.”  
  
It was his final hope, that laying out the words like that and telling them that they were hurting him would make them stop picking away at Malfoy. Whatever faults the Weasleys had, they had always loved Harry and cared about how he felt. If they knew how they were hurting him, Harry thought they would stop.  
  
Sure enough, Molly’s hand went to her mouth, and her eyes flooded with tears. That was difficult to watch, but Harry accepted the hard, trembling hug that Molly enfolded him in and the way she murmured into his ear. “Of course, Harry. I never knew—I didn’t think about it. But I’m so sorry.”  
  
Arthur came up to shake his hand and beg his pardon, and George gave him a wary smile. The others, Harry thought, had nothing to apologize for; Ginny and Charlie had been making an effort to get along with Malfoy, and Percy was converted, and he hoped Bill would be. And Ron and Hermione’s loyalty to him was too great for mere words. They would follow him, in the end, as long as he could reassure them this was the truth.  
  
After that, there was more  _rational_ talk about the mummidade and a consensus that they would have to wait and see, and Harry, to his relief, could go away and take care of Teddy for a while, as Malfoy took his turn on camp guard. Before he departed, though, he reached over and squeezed Harry’s arm hard enough to leave a set of fingerprints. Harry promptly turned his arm so no one else could see it, and nodded, and departed.  
  
He might have managed to win peace from the Weasleys, but that wasn’t the same as making peace with Malfoy.  
  
*  
  
“This is my house, and I don’t want you in it.”  
  
Draco looked steadily at Andromeda Black, and thought about shoving past her. But she was Teddy’s grandmother, and that meant he wanted to keep up a good relationship with her, if he could. He didn’t think she cared.  
  
“It’s  _our_ house,” Potter’s voice said, before Draco could make up his mind what to reply, and his face appeared behind Andromeda’s shoulder. “Come in, Malfoy, please. Forgive her.”  
  
Draco nodded and moved past Andromeda, who didn’t actually lift her hand to stop him. Potter was cradling Teddy, who had gone to sleep with his head drooping back and his mouth open. Draco dropped down on his knees in front of Teddy and reached out.  
  
Potter looked at him, bright and wary.  
  
And then he handed Teddy to Draco, and nodded back, his mind whirling with the images of Draco guarding Teddy when he’d been at play in the pool.  
  
Draco rocked Teddy back and forth, keeping his head bowed so that his chin brushed Teddy’s hair, and he could murmur a reassurance when Teddy woke and said something in a soft, confused voice. He looked around, saw the small pallet that was Teddy’s—Potter didn’t have a separate one, although it looked as if Andromeda did—and laid him down on it. A few tucks with pillow and blanket later, and Teddy was gone, although he did say something that Draco thought was “Good night.” Draco whispered it back and then stood and turned around to face Potter.  
  
Potter’s face was bright pink. He nodded to Draco and said, “You wanted to talk to me about something.”  
  
“Not here,” Draco said, letting his eyes dart and cut at Andromeda. Potter’s mind stirred with currents of protest, but in the end, he let it go with a sigh and nodded, following Draco out of the house.  
  
Draco began to walk away without looking over his shoulder to see if Potter was following. He had fucking well better be, and if he wasn’t, then he could take his chances with Draco’s weapons.  
  
They walked beyond the edge of the camp, beyond the greenhouses and the small, warded plot of ground where the werewolf was staying with his wife and daughter. Potter’s winds reached out to it, the bond told Draco, and came back with no scent of blood. That appeared to be enough for Potter’s concern about Delacour-Weasley’s safety, and the little girl’s, because the next moment he followed Draco.   
  
Draco reached a hill that still had long grass and turned around, sitting down to face Potter. Potter sat down in response, his hands folded behind him. His body would have looked relaxed if one knew nothing about him.  
  
 _Or if you have no bond._  
  
The reminder that he had a link to Potter no one else could fairly claim relaxed Draco. He leaned in. Potter visibly tensed, the pulse in his throat fluttering so hard that Draco thought it would explode outwards like a Snitch.  
  
“What more do you  _want_?” Potter demanded suddenly. “I told the Weasleys that I was bonded to you and that you spoke for me and that I didn’t regret it. What else do you think you can take from me?”  
  
“Only what’s my due,” Draco said. The sentence didn’t sound as smooth as it had in his head. And Potter, from the way he smirked and ripped his head to the side, knew it.  
  
“Tell me what that is, then.” Potter’s voice remained clipped. “I think the Weasleys will treat you with more respect, now. For Andromeda, it’ll almost certainly take a longer time. And—”  
  
“I don’t care about that,” Draco said, and clarified when Potter simply gaped at him. “I don’t care about  _them._ I want to know that you stay with me out of something more than bitter necessity, something more than facts.”  
  
Potter hesitated, then picked up a blade of grass and tossed it in the air. His winds played with it like kittens with a string, gamboling and tossing, which conveniently allowed him to avoid focusing on Draco’s face. “I don’t know what you mean. I thought that was what you wanted the Weasleys to think.”  
  
“The Weasleys,” Draco said, taking Potter’s arm between his claws because he could, “not  _you_.”  
  
Potter closed his eyes in that tired-to-death way that Draco hated. “I don’t hate you. I respect your fighting ability. I slept with you. I hunted with you. What—what else do you want? A love declaration? Because that’s not what you’re going to get, and I can feel enough of your emotions to know that you don’t really  _want_ one, anyway.”  
  
Draco curled his fingers deeper, taking in the feeling of muscle and skin. “No,” he said quietly, and leaned in so that he could speak against Potter’s cheek. “It’s not what I want.”  
  
Potter opened his mouth, and Draco’s tongue was there, sliding in. Potter groaned and gave way beneath him, but in the same resigned way that he had when they first fucked, and Draco sighed, forced a knee between Potter’s legs, and leaned down to speak plainly, since Potter was still too good at denying what flowed down the bond, and they did better with words.  
  
“I want some fucking  _enthusiasm._ ”  
  
Potter tensed beneath him for a moment, as though that would be the one, of all Draco’s demands, to drive him off. Then he arched up and nearly bit Draco’s tongue in his kissing, in his hands that were beneath Draco’s shirt and in his hair and on his shoulders, scratching and driving in and scratching some more when Draco tried to pull back and take his shirt off.  
  
 _Maybe he wanted that, too,_ Draco thought, dazed, getting the shirt off and focusing on the way that Potter’s winds whistled around his ears.  _But he didn’t want to show it because he thought_ I  _didn’t want it…_  
  
Potter kissed him, and Draco gave up the tiresome game of figuring out which Gryffindor emotions went where, for the pure pleasure and success of kissing Potter.


	17. Some Enthusiasm

Harry panted beneath Malfoy, and when he had recovered enough from the panting to feel like he could breathe, kissed him again. Malfoy growled at him and dug deeply into him. His fingers were in Harry’s neck and Harry could feel his pleasure in the way that Harry’s skin rasped away under his touch, the flowing of the blood, the curling of the pain.  
  
Feel it, and feel his own pain, and feel Malfoy’s driving desire, as single and mindless as the hunger that Harry had once felt for a family of his own.  
  
He flung his legs wide and then clapped them shut again, around Malfoy’s waist. Malfoy huffed and looked down at him with wide eyes, shaking his head. Harry gave him a grin that he knew resembled a death’s head in turn and said, “Fuck me.”  
  
Malfoy jerked. His eyes were bright as he looked at Harry, but Harry could feel his mind charging back and forth, the way his thoughts swarmed like schools of fish, the desire that alternated with the fury.  
  
And the fear that Harry might change his mind.  
  
“It’s not going to alter,” Harry said, and bit him on the side of the throat, keeping his teeth locked in until Malfoy tore his head away with an irritated sound and the ripple of claws on the edges of his fingers. “You wanted enthusiasm. Well, I want it, too. It’s a lot better like this than it was the first time.”  
  
“The first time was  _good_ ,” Malfoy said, but with a sharpness to his voice that rivaled his claws.  
  
“This will be better.” Harry let his legs fall open and arched suggestively towards Malfoy. “You were the one who spoke with contempt that first time about me being a virgin. You might as well do your part towards making sure that I’m not one anymore.”  
  
Malfoy began tearing at his clothes. Harry called winds to help, to form little hands that would pluck his shirt and trousers off without tearing them. Malfoy could do the same thing with his weapons, maybe, but Harry thought it would take him time to gentle their cutting power, and Harry didn’t want to wait.  
  
 _Don’t want to slow down. Don’t want to stop. Don’t want to think about what I’m doing. Don’t want to do anything but feel._  
  
Harry couldn’t remember the last time he had granted himself permission to do that.  
  
*  
  
Potter was being  _sensible,_ and Draco knew that he had to act before the idiot changed his mind.  
  
As Potter’s clothes were dragged off him, though, he sat back and let his gaze and his hand both rest on Potter’s chest. Because acting fast didn’t always mean acting hastily.  
  
Potter looked at Draco, and his cheeks turned the color of Weasley hair. His hands twitched, and Draco knew that he wished he could cover up, and was holding himself back from doing that even as he lay there. He had to know it was too late already.  
  
But no one had ever looked at him like this, lingeringly, as though considering him for his looks instead of his celebrity scar. Which only prompted Draco to give him a vicious smile and go on doing it.  
  
Potter was nothing special, seen as just a normal person, the way Draco had looked at other normal people. Not much muscle, lots of wiriness. A mess of slender limbs, a tumble of chest and legs and arms, that made Draco wonder how often he got anything to eat. (And didn’t  _that_ thought cause an interesting swirl in the middle of Potter’s mind, a dancing collapse of clouds and chaos?) No wonder he’d been grateful to find magic. He could survive, but he would never be a strongman. This was the body of a survivor.  
  
Draco bent down and allowed himself to trace one of Potter’s scars with his mouth, the wide white one punctuated with jagged dots that trailed up and around Potter’s hip.  
  
Potter closed his eyes and tilted his head back, his mouth open. Draco listened to him pant and knew that he wasn’t holding a sound back from escaping; he was so caught up in the strain Draco was subjecting him to that he  _couldn’t_ make a sound. Draco rewarded him with the flat slap of a hand over his frantically beating heart and a bite to the scar.  
  
His other hand had found its way between Potter’s legs, moving with the familiar ease of someone who had already sucked Potter off once.  _The only one who ever has,_ Draco thought, and didn’t know which of them the thought came from.  _The only one who ever will._  
  
That last thought was definitely his, from the way that Potter looked at him, all parted lips and bright teeth ready for the kill. Draco laughed and sat back, his own clothes gone as he pried at them with the edges of his fingers. He could always  _Reparo_ them back together. He retained the use of his wand, unlike Potter.  
  
“Stop insulting me and get in me,” Potter snapped. “Unless you want me to change my mind.”  
  
“That’s the beauty of it, Potter,” Draco said, and bent down and kissed him long enough and hard enough to make Potter choke and forget his name, and that they were in the middle of a conversation. “No matter how long I talk, no matter what I say, I’m going to be in you. Because you want me there.”  
  
Potter ripped his head down, his mouth opening in the gesture that Draco thought he would use to swallow a hunk of meat, and then he nodded. “Right,” he said, sprawling back and spreading his legs so wide that Draco felt the sympathetic ache in his own hips. “So get in me, because I keep wondering about this pleasure that you promise me. I want to feel it.”  
  
Draco had to close his eyes, and then he had to reach for his wand. Because there were certain things that neither his weapons nor Potter’s winds could do easily, and conjuring lube was one of them.  
  
Potter kept his eyes closed and his hands still as Draco plunged slick fingers into him, but his mouth fell open again, and his legs spread further. Draco chuckled. He wasn’t even doing anything pleasant yet, anything that would make normal people feel good, as he thought towards Potter.  
  
Potter managed to bring his tongue and teeth close enough together to talk. “It’s not g-good. It’s  _intense_.”  
  
Draco piled on top of him again, kissing him savagely, reaching into him. His mind whirled with birds and hunts and mummidade and Potter speaking up beside him when he decided to tell the Weasleys that Draco spoke for him, Potter responding when Draco asked for enthusiasm, Potter trusting him to take care of Teddy,  _Potter._  
  
He rubbed his erection against Potter’s arse and took his hands in his, pinning them to the ground and tenderly fanning out his fingers. He bit Potter’s lip and did so until the blood flowed. He scratched Potter again and smiled at the skin under his nails with more than a little satisfaction.  
  
Yes, this was what he  _wanted._  
  
*  
  
Malfoy was insane. But then, Harry was probably mad, too, because he was letting the madman bite him and scratch him until he bled.  
  
And then fuck him.  
  
The fingers inside him probed and made him feel new things. Harry had long ago stopped thinking there were new things to feel. The thick, choking pleasure in Malfoy’s mind from simply watching him was a new thing, though, and so was this.  
  
Here was someone who wanted him for reasons other than his celebrity, who might even want him in spite of that. The bond could be blamed for tying them together. But Harry didn’t want to blame anyone, not particularly. He wanted this.  
  
“Still a lot of talking, not a lot of action,” he said, and kept his eyes shut so that he could savor the sensations further.  
  
Malfoy either picked that up from his mind and wasn’t about to object, or liked it. He moved back down Harry’s body and shoved his fingers back in, working them around with little grunts until Harry arched his back.  
  
“Still not good enough for a normal person?” he asked, with his breath coming faster and his voice full of laughter.  
  
Harry didn’t bother answering, just kept his eyes shut and his body busy. He was fucking himself on Malfoy’s fingers now, or at least that was what Malfoy would probably call it. He didn’t care. He wanted to offer himself up and wait for the pleasure, the intensity, to sweep through him and rise to a firestorm. Malfoy was just the instrument he was using to achieve that height.  
  
 _Is that all?_  
  
The voice came from inside him and around him. Malfoy might have spoken aloud. Harry answered that way, his mouth dangling open when he was done, still occupied in forcing himself down. “For right now, yes.”  
  
Malfoy kissed him for it, at least, and then sat back on his heels and lined his cock up with Harry’s hole, which was the only reason that Harry had to value him, right now. Harry panted and let his legs tremble, let his tongue hang out. He wanted this, and no one else was around to see.  
  
Malfoy slid inside him, painfully slowly. Heartbreakingly slowly. Harry counted a few breaths and then shoved himself in and down, before Malfoy could catch on to what he was doing and stop him from doing it.  
  
Malfoy shouted. Then he panted into Harry’s ear, “Why would I want to stop you from doing that?”  
  
“Because you were going slowly,” Harry said, and twisted his head up to bite him, which made Malfoy shift inside him in interesting ways and made Harry cry out. Malfoy caught his wrists and clenched them in the air, above Harry’s body like a wrestler’s, and held them there as he worked himself further and deeper in, slower, fucking.  
  
“Not now,” Malfoy said, and his teeth were bright like a fox’s.  
  
Harry laughed at him, hearing the winds in the upper skies on Hurricane dance in response to the laughter, knowing he could call them down and fling Malfoy off him in an instant if he wanted. “You like this,” he said. “How’s that for  _enthusiasm?_ ”  
  
“I think I like this very much,” Malfoy said, hammering his hips home and making Harry groan and rock back. “And I think that I’d like to do it again.”  
  
 _Trust Malfoy to make a point like_ this, Harry thought, but he nodded back, because Malfoy would have felt the agreement writhing in his mind already, would know how good Harry felt, would know how wonderful Harry thought everything and everyone was at the moment. “Yes,” he gasped. “Yes, so would I.”  
  
And then Malfoy bent his knees and locked his feet on something and began to fuck him the way Harry wanted, without pausing and without slowing down.  
  
Harry yielded himself to it.   
  
*  
 _  
_Potter’s head sprawled on the ground. His neck flopped. His limbs did the same thing, flying up and down in response to Draco’s thrusts.  
  
It was honestly the sexiest thing Draco had ever seen.  
  
He grabbed Potter’s shoulder with his teeth and hung on, through the motions that wrenched his neck and the tremors that invaded his muscles and the crying that filled his ears, as the moment came closer, and closer. Joined to Potter’s pleasure, joined to the warmth of his body and the way they both moved, Draco was soaring along with it, welcoming the orgasm, in a way that he had never done before.  
  
Potter released first. Draco heard his hiss and caterwauling, and felt the soaking warmth on his stomach. He closed his eyes and rejoiced, in the moments before the storm turned back on him and caught  _him_ up.  
  
Sound and fire and fury, and then the final dashing down to the ground, still limp and shaking with pleasure.  
  
Draco lay there for a while, because he didn’t have to move and so didn’t want to. He stroked whatever part of Potter he could reach; he wasn’t sure what it was at the moment, his hands unable to tell the difference between hair and skin and bone, so far had he gone in the opposite direction. He let his consciousness drift and seep back into his body, and sighed out when it returned.  
  
Potter stirred under him, and swallowed shakily, and asked, “Is that what you meant?”  
  
Draco laughed into Potter’s hair—yes, it was hair currently touching his face and sprawling across his nostrils—and turned his head. “Yes, it was,” he said. Potter looked back at him with the chaotic swirl of emotions building up in him until Draco wasn’t sure what would come out of his mouth, so he seized the initiative and repeated, “It was, Harry.”  
  
Potter gaped at him. Draco leaned in to kiss him. He didn’t look attractive with his jaw hanging open and his tongue protruding.   
  
Potter kissed back, that tongue dodging and lapping around Draco’s and making him gasp out a surrender for having thought of him as ugly. Then Potter snorted. “Why call me Harry aloud if you’re going to call me Potter in your head?”  
  
“Because that’s what I want, Harry,” Draco said, and enjoyed the little ripple that traveled through Potter’s body when he said that, the surge and jounce and dance he couldn’t control. He  _responded_ to his name. Well, of course he did, but he also responded to Draco saying it. “I would suggest that you use my first name as well, at least in front of the Weasleys.”  
  
Potter hesitated, then shrugged in the way that Draco had felt him do right before they sprang into the middle of  _this_ and said, “All right, Draco.”  
  
 _Yes._ The sensation tugged like hooks against Draco’s blood and marrow, and he knew it would for a time, no matter how often Potter said  _Malfoy_ when it was just between them. He smiled and leaned his head on Potter’s chin, shutting his eyes.   
  
“Erm, Draco?” Potter’s hands were uncertain on his sides and shoulders. That was all right, Draco thought. Uncertain was sometimes the same thing as tender. “Do you want to go inside? If we stay out here like this, someone could find us.”  
  
“Teddy and Victoire are safely tucked away by now,” Draco murmured, not opening his eyes. “They’re the only ones I might worry about seeing us like this, the only ones who might genuinely not  _understand_. The others will understand, well enough, both what we did and the claim I have on you. Or are you turning your back on that, too, now?”  
  
Silence, while the bond between them was charged with noise. Then Potter said, “No. Reckon we’re like this and it’ll stay like this, now.”  
  
Draco had to laugh into his neck again. “No, it won’t. It will change, and change again, and that’s the truth. That’s the way  _things_ should be.”  
  
Potter shifted beneath him and murmured, “That might be the most profound thing you’ve ever said.”  
  
“Well, the speaker of profound truths would like to sleep now,” Draco murmured, and stretched his arms out over Potter, sprawling above and below and in circles and crosses that meant Potter couldn’t escape, that he had to bear all of Draco.  
  
From the way Potter’s arms locked around Draco, he didn’t mind that.  
  
*  
  
“This is it, then,” Hermione whispered behind him. “We should expose any other seeds we have and any animals we raise to the wild magic.”  
  
Harry, his eyes on the thick forest of green shoots and leafy heads that had sprouted from the seeds he’d taken up into the windstorm, nodded. Then he glanced at Hermione with a smile. “Are we  _going_ to raise any other animals than the bird Draco and I brought back?”  
  
“I brought embryos with me,” Hermione said.  
  
Harry turned and stared at her. Not only was this the first he had heard about  _that_ , he would have thought it was impossible to transport embryos with current magic other than inside the mother. “What?” he whispered.  
  
Hermione flushed a little. “Well, when I realized where we were going, I knew that we might not be able to take lots of animals with us. What if they didn’t survive the planet’s winds? What if they couldn’t eat the grass? We would have to spend a whole lot of time raising food for them before we could raise food for us, and in the meantime, they’d probably all starve and die. So I started reading about Muggle experiments on freezing the embryos of endangered species.” She brightened. “It’s  _fascinating._ They can make sure that a rare wild cow gets born to a domestic cow instead, and—”  
  
Harry chuckled, coughed, and recalled her to the present. “I’m sure it is,” he said. “But how did you manage it? And what animals will they be born from?”  
  
Hermione shrugged. “I practiced veterinary magic and ice spells and Preservation Charms until I had it. The mothers are just going to be Transfigured grass at first. I studied object-animal Transfiguration a lot, too.”  
  
Those plain words, Harry was sure, concealed a tremendous amount of work. Hermione grew impatient with other people who weren’t willing to put in the labor to understand what she understood, but she never seemed to see her own labor as anything remarkable.  
  
“That’s wonderful,” Harry said, grinning at her, and seeing her grin back. “What kinds of animals did you bring?”  
  
Hermione gnawed her lip a little. “Well—mostly cows. They worked the best, and I know we can use them for butter and milk and cheese and hides as well as meat. The problem will be getting them to eat the grass. I brought some sheep, too, and a few goats, and some birds. I don’t know if we should use the goats with the mummidade around, though.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Which birds?”  
  
“Geese, chickens, ducks.” Hermione began to walk back towards the main camp, and Harry followed her. He knew that Malfoy wasn’t far away, because the bond was bending and stirring, but he felt no sense of urgent need from that direction, so he would remain with Hermione for now. “But we can’t use the ducks until we have enough water for them to swim in. The geese, too, for that matter. The chickens would give us meat, for when the bird’s meat runs out.” She glanced towards Bill’s house.  
  
“I spoke with him yesterday,” Harry said quietly. “He seemed a lot calmer and saner. Before, he wasn’t even  _trying_ to control what happened to him. He just thought it was his natural reaction to the immigration, and that he should be allowed to be as nasty as he wanted. Now that we’ve forced him to think about it, I think things will go better.”  
  
Hermione smiled at him. “I hope so!” Then she paused, and gnawed her lip once again.  
  
“What is it?” Harry found himself shifting and bracing his weight, ready to protect her against any threat. The bond stirred again, and then he knew Malfoy was moving towards him. Harry knew nothing he could say would prevent him from coming, but he did reach out and send a light stroke down the spine of Malfoy’s mind, to tell him there was no threat in sight and they probably didn’t have to react to it yet.   
  
“We’re still doing it,” Hermione whispered. “Still acting like the leaders and like we have to decide what’s best for everyone else. I kept the secret of the embryos because I didn’t know if it would work and I didn’t want to raise false hope, but then the first one I told was you, and we’re already making decisions about which animals should be born and which shouldn’t. I think—I think we need to discuss it with  _everyone_.”  
  
Harry bristled for a moment, wanting to tell her that she had kept the embryos secret for a good reason and then told him about them first just because he happened to ask about them, but then nodded. He could at least see the justice in her complaint, although he hated to see her put herself down because of it. “All right. That’s true. I’ll—make sure that we have another meeting soon.”  
  
He grimaced at the thought of another one. On the other hand, if he managed to hand over some of his leadership role, then he would have to attend less, or at least be a spectator instead of a leader.  
  
Malfoy appeared, loping easily across the grass towards them like a wolf heading home to its lair. Harry raised his hand to Malfoy, and found it hard to take his eyes off him. So strong, so gleaming, his hair rippling and flowing and flashing.   
  
 _I’m flattered, Harry._  
  
Harry flushed and turned back towards Hermione, who was looking knowingly at him, but at least wouldn’t know  _why_. “Do you want to tell them today or tomorrow? If we wait—”  
  
A sharp shout brought Harry’s head around. The winds were gathering in the sky, he saw, the storm-blue flush coming, and he hadn’t called them. He raised his winds in defense, and Malfoy crossed the last two meters with an easy leap and landed beside him. He rested his arm against Harry’s shoulder. Harry bowed his head and tried not to think about how comforting it was, to have him this close.  
  
“Storm?” Hermione asked, already casting the spell that pulled clods of earth towards the greenhouses to brace their glass walls.  
  
Harry frowned and cocked his head. The magic was rising, yes, but without the deep, passionate roar he would have expected to hear from an approaching storm. In fact, the winds were dancing, the way they had with him when he had gone up to fly on his broom and Malfoy had interrupted.  
  
Malfoy stirred beside him, about to say something. Harry charged ahead of him. “No, it’s not. I don’t know why the winds are gathering, but—”  
  
Another shout, and Harry turned to see Charlie running towards them. Only now did it occur to him that the first shout must have been about something other than the winds, which the others couldn’t feel, or the sky turning blue, which hadn’t happened until after it.  
  
“What is it?” Harry called, hastening towards him, Malfoy a silent shadow at his side and Hermione a noisy one behind him. “Did something happen to Teddy?”  
  
Charlie shook his head. His thick hair whipped around his head in the rising wind, and his eyes were wide and wild. Harry wondered if his own magic had started to manifest.  
  
“The egg!” Charlie shouted, gesturing up to the sky, where the winds had begun to wheel in celebration. “It’s hatching!”


	18. Hatching the Wind

Draco ran behind Potter as they made their way towards the egg. The whole camp was in motion, as far as he could tell, except for the Primrose woman, who huddled on the hill at the farthest edge and tried to pretend she was the color of the grasses. Draco sneered. She couldn’t watch for enemies by looking their way.  
  
Potter moved his head like a roped horse, and Draco laughed at him.  _It truly bothers you to hear me criticizing anything, doesn’t it?_  
  
Potter jumped over a small ditch in the ground in front of them and ran on without answering. Draco panted behind him, enjoying the wind in his mouth and the danger coiling in his stomach. Perhaps they would have to kill the hatching bird. Perhaps the hatching would draw other birds and they would have to slaughter them. Perhaps the Weasleys would object to the young bird actually surviving and he and Potter would fall together, back against back, to fight the red-haired rodents.  
  
Draco’s skull hummed with the tension coming at him from Potter’s direction. Draco laughed and laughed, and ran on.  
  
They arrived at the egg with plenty of time to spare, if the numerous but shallow cracks in the shell’s surface meant anything. Draco let the back of his hand rest against Potter’s shoulder and glanced around at the others. There seemed to be every denizen of the camp there except Primrose, the children, and Delacour-Weasley and his aunt, no doubt staying behind with the children.  
  
The werewolf lurked at the edge of the boiling activity, mostly caused by the dragon-keeper and the remaining twin, who ran around in circles and bellowed contradictory orders. He caught Draco’s eye and glanced to the side with his scars burning.  
  
 _I don’t care about him, as long as he doesn’t try to move,_ Draco thought, and turned so that he was balancing more lightly on the balls of his feet and could spring towards the werewolf if he caught him charging.  
  
Potter’s head buzzed and swarmed with the confusion he felt, seeing Draco, the coward who didn’t want to kill, so ready to do so. Draco snapped back at him that killing with claws was easier than killing with a wand, and received a thick, murky soup of emotions in return, containing currents that he didn’t want to think about.  
  
The egg shuddered, and one of the cracks worked itself deeper. By now, the sky was bluer than Draco had ever seen it, even during the long twilights that marked the decline of the sun. He felt his hair lift as the winds descended.  
  
“Can you control them if you have to, Harry?” Granger asked, behind them.  
  
Potter lifted his hands without answering, and a dome coagulated above them, firm enough that Draco could half-see it, the way that one could see a tornado.  
  
Granger seemed satisfied. She went back to watching the egg hatch with more passion than any of them written on her face, and didn’t turn her head or flinch even when the original Weasel fought his way through the crowd to get to her side. Draco reckoned it was her need for new knowledge that made her feel like that, and regretted her blood. They might have got on better without it.  
  
Potter was stiff with outrage ahead of him. Draco touched the back of his neck and whispered, “ _Harry_ ,” to make him flinch.  
  
Granger frowned at him and hissed something about how Draco shouldn’t do that with the bird on the edge of hatching, but Draco ignored her. He trusted in their magic to guard them from any too-bad consequence of the hatching, which meant he was loose and relaxed and alert, interested instead of afraid.  
  
 _If only life could be like this all the time._  
  
*  
  
 _How would Malfoy like it if I prodded him all the time?_  
  
But from the way that Malfoy’s mind shifted and oriented towards him when he thought that, Harry was convinced Malfoy would like it just fine, at least in this mood. He kept his head turned away and his winds ready and his attention concentrated on the egg, since it was all he could do.  
  
And the bird, and whether it would survive, and whether they would manage to feed it, was more important than the way that Malfoy could make him jump, anyway.  
  
The egg was changing colors, Harry saw, flushing from pale to a deep blue like the sky. Then one of the cracks stabbed deep enough to leak yolk, which was purple in color and scarlet and gold. Harry watched it pour forth and soak the ground, and wasn’t surprised when Hermione waved her wand to gather some of it up. She would try to use it as compost for their plants, knowing her, and probably for other things as well.  
  
Bill watched the yolk with hungry eyes. Harry thought it best to ignore him, too. He had already dominated too much of the life in the campsite since they arrived on Hurricane for Harry’s liking.  
  
The yolk stopped spilling at last, and another crack worked its way around the egg from top to bottom, as slowly and painstakingly as though someone was hammering on it. Then the halves at last wobbled and fell apart, slowly, and still sticking together at the very bottom, sinking into the grass.  
  
The chick stumbled out of the innards, took a step forwards, and opened its beak, an inarticulate shriek rumbling out. Harry jumped. The sound was louder and lower than the one its parent had produced. He hadn’t expected that.  
  
“It’s hungry,” Ginny said, and started fighting her way forwards, eyes narrowed as though she was watching the sun rise. “Can’t you hear that?”  
  
“Everyone can hear that, Weasley,” Malfoy said from behind Harry, and Harry sent him the image of a proud cat licking its own arse. Malfoy radiated silent offense back at him, and Harry was satisfied with that enough not to realize what had happened at first, that Ginny had fallen into the grass in front of the bird and was cradling the great, blind head in her arms. The beak was at least as wide as her hand.  
  
“Ginny,” Molly said, taking a step and then stopping as if the bird had frozen her, even though its eyes were still shut and its feathers were plastered with so much wet slickness that Harry couldn’t even make out their color yet. “What are you doing?”  
  
“You can’t  _feel_ it?” Ginny glared at all of them with her eyes bright, and then reached for something along her side. Harry blinked when she brought out a knife; if she was sorry for the bird, it seemed strange that she would want to hurt it.  
  
“Gin,” Charlie began, his voice skirling up in a way that Malfoy found amusing and Harry would have if it wasn’t  _Ginny_.  
  
“This is the way it has to be done,” Ginny said, voice shaking, and then slid the knife along the side of her arm. In a second, she was as slick and wet as the bird, blood shining there, dripping and glistening, and she turned her arm further—Harry found himself thinking that her shoulder must hurt—and thrust her arm into the edge of the bird’s beak.  
  
The bird made a frustrated sound, head bobbing, and then opened its beak again and shot out a barbed tongue, with a dangling tip. It lapped at the blood on Ginny’s arm, and bubbled. Its head thrashed from side to side, and then Harry saw the matted feathers on the top of the head peel back and flip off to the sides.  
  
Its eyes opened. They were as blue as the skies of Hurricane, and they fixed on Ginny with such adoration that Malfoy shut up in the back of Harry’s head.  
  
Ginny shook, and gulped, and smiled, and pulled her arm away from the bird’s head. Harry thought it would shriek again, and it did, but more softly. It stood up on lurching, clumsy talons and leaned its head against Ginny’s chest. For a moment, it nipped and worried at her shirt, and then it shrieked again.  
  
“It’s hungry,” Ginny said, her voice softer. “I know that I can Transfigure some grass into meat, and it won’t matter what it tastes like. I think—I think the blood was the most important thing. I think it’s going to be all right.” She stood up and helped the bird up, too. Its head came to her waist. “Sorry to steal your bird, Charlie,” she added, looking at her brother, who stood there gaping at her with everyone else. “But I was the one who could  _feel_ its hunger. I think this is the way it was meant to be.”  
  
The bird toddled at her side as she headed off. Harry watched her go, and felt the dangerous laughter bubbling up from Malfoy in time to reach out and slam a hand over his mouth. Malfoy laughed against his skin anyway, and nipped his palm with sharp teeth. Harry found himself thinking of foxes and wolves and shook his head, turning away from the sight of Ginny and the bird to look at Charlie.  
  
“We won’t butcher it?” Bill asked.  
  
Malfoy shifted to look at him. Harry moved in response, and kept his arm firmly in place around Malfoy’s shoulders.  _No,_ he thought in response to the thoughts stabbing at him from Malfoy’s direction.  _I don’t happen to agree that you should be able to kill Bill because he asks a simple question._  
  
“We won’t be able to ride it?” Charlie asked in turn. He took a little step after Ginny, as though he thought there was some mistake, as though the bird should be his because he had lavished care on its egg.  
  
 _That is an excellent reason,_ Malfoy’s voice scraped and whispered.  
  
Harry ignored him, and spoke to Charlie instead. “Ginny might be the one who rides it, instead of you. It makes sense, in a way. She was the best flyer out of all of us—” he ignored the way that Malfoy turned his head, because the advantage that Harry had was really his wind, not talent “—and she heard its hunger in her mind. That’s a sign that this is her wild magic, isn’t it? Besides, she might let you ride it sometimes.”  
  
Charlie shook his head and raked a hand through his hair. He was one of the most naturally cheerful people Harry had ever known, though, and a moment later, he flashed a rueful grin. “It’s certainly a chastisement to me for being so sure that I would be the one to guide it and train it,” he muttered, and headed after Ginny.  
  
Harry turned to Bill.  
  
Bill stood there with his hands digging into his arms, the way that Malfoy would stand with his claws at the ready, and oh my, didn’t Malfoy give Harry a blast of indignation at  _that_ idea? But he shook his head when Harry moved a little closer to him. “I’m fine,” he said. His voice had less of a snarl than before. “Just puzzled.”  
  
“About why it chose to go to Ginny?” Harry asked gently.  
  
“About why we aren’t going to slaughter it.” Bill stared at him. “We need the food.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “If Ginny can really Transfigure the meat to feed it, then she won’t be taking any food away from the rest of us. And if we keep it and she trains it and it can hunt, then it’ll bring back a lot of food for us in the long run. That’s what we need to be thinking about, the long term, not the short term.”  
  
Bill snorted, and looked more like the man Harry had known, the curse-breaker with the dragon fang earring, than he had in months. “And what are we going to hunt, now that you’ve made alliance with the major source of the birds’ food?”  
  
Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. I think we’ll discover something else, though. The mummidade have magic of their own, and there are more birds on the planet than I thought could exist. They must hunt something else some of the time.”  
  
Bill nodded in a way that made Harry know he wasn’t really thinking about the answers. He was also staring beyond Harry, and when Harry turned around, he saw Fleur walking towards them, with Victoire in her arms.  
  
She halted in front of Bill and looked at him with calm eyes. “This eez right?” she asked, with only a trace of accent in her voice. “This eez the way that you have chosen to rejoin your family?”  
  
Bill swallowed. Harry couldn’t understand half the silent messages they were exchanging, but he was sure they existed, the way that the ones between him and Malfoy did. “It is.”  
  
(Malfoy leaned into him at the comparison and blasted his mind with heat and cold. Harry chose to ignore him. When he had constant access to Harry’s thoughts, he would have to get used to hearing unflattering things about himself along with the flattering ones, like how well he could fuck).  
  
Fleur smiled at Bill, and handed him his daughter. “That eez good,” she said, and accompanied him towards the center of camp for the first time since the day he had almost gone wild.  
  
Harry relaxed with a long sigh. There were problems to come, of course, and probably a lot of them would center on that bloody bird and the way that Ginny was hanging over it. But for now, they had the problem of Bill solved, and that was a big one.  
  
Light touches to the back of his neck turned him around. Malfoy stepped up to him and lowered his head. His thoughts were pointed enough that Harry braced himself for a scolding, but Malfoy said, “What are you going to do about Primrose?”  
  
Harry blinked, then cursed, and set out for the far side of the camp with Malfoy behind him, flowing along like a great cat.  
  
*  
  
 _He would have died several times over so far, if not for me._  
  
Draco was content to hold the knowledge to himself at the moment. It wasn’t as though he had to flaunt it. Potter could feel it, from the way his shoulders hunched and his stride jerked along.  
  
Draco lifted his nose and tried to set Potter an example of the perfect way to walk: shoulders back, all your body dangling and flowing from those shoulders, his head tilted at the correct angle to make him look handsome. He had his reward in Potter’s needles of irritation and the way that Weasley-the-youngest looked at him as he passed by, instead of paying all her attention to her bird.  
  
The bond that connected him to Potter thickened when Weasley looked. Draco laughed into his ear.  
  
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re the only one I want to fuck.”  
  
“How nice,” Potter said, turning his head from side to side as though that would bring Primrose automatically into sight. Draco knew that he had sent his winds to scout, but so far, they had brought back no word of her. “Have you considered that it might not go both ways? That I might want to fuck someone who’s not you?”  
  
Draco drew his claws casually up Potter’s shoulder, slitting the fabric there. Potter turned around with a slow snarl and reached for wind.  
  
“No,” Draco whispered to him. “You should be doing two things: searching for Primrose and asking me to use  _Reparo,_ since you can’t wield your wand for even such a simple spell anymore.”  
  
Potter closed his eyes and shook his head. “We have more important things to do,” he whispered, and turned around again.  
  
Draco sighed and followed. It was disappointing when Potter didn’t follow the script and agree with him, or ask Draco for help. There was nothing sweeter, for Draco’s new definition of that word, than for Potter to yield to him while still spitting and snarling on the surface and proclaiming that he would never yield.  
  
Draco blinked when he thought that.  
  
 _That’s what I really want. Not so much the fucking—although that’s nice—as the yielding. If Potter asked someone else for help on a regular basis, if he gave in to what people requested of him, then I would kill him._  
  
Draco nodded. That was it, then, another reason to detach Potter from leading the Weasel pack. Draco hated to watch him give in. A pliant, compliant Potter was a treasure that only Draco deserved.  
  
“ _There_ she is,” Potter said, and broke into a sprint. “Stop thinking about perverted things and follow me.”  
  
Draco thought they could have had an interesting discussion on the meaning of perversion, but if Potter had located Primrose, then Draco wanted to see what he would do. So he followed, never panting or seeming tired, because that would have undermined Potter’s confidence in him.  
  
Potter’s thoughts bounced back towards him, furious and roiling and so formless that Draco didn’t catch a sense of words. He smiled serenely into the distance and kept running.  
  
They reached the top of the hills around the encampment, and Draco saw Primrose, walking away across the grass. She didn’t carry anything that she hadn’t arrived with, he saw by looking up and down her robes, unless she had stuffed some seeds into a pocket. And even then, they would be useless to her without Granger’s knowledge and Harry’s ability to take them up into the winds.  
  
“Hetty!” Potter called, which, with an effort, Draco remembered was Primrose’s first name. Potter slipped and slithered down the hill towards her. Primrose must have heard him, with his winds directing the sound, but she didn’t turn around.  
  
Draco touched Potter’s shoulder once he had reached the bottom of the hill. “If she’s that determined to leave, you might as well let her,” he murmured.  
  
Potter shook him off and continued running. “Hetty!” he called again, and finally the woman turned around to face him.  
  
Her face was so tear-streaked that Draco felt his eyebrows rise. Had the hatching of the bird been enough to carry her back in time to the destruction of her people? Perhaps so. In that case, Draco was glad that she was leaving. They had enough fissures and weaknesses running through their group.  
  
Potter shifted in irritation, but said nothing. Primrose was the one who whispered, “I can’t. I saw the way that—that Ginny soothed the bird, and made it responsible to her. But I can’t live in the same place as one of those predators and the way it’ll look when it grows up. I can’t,” she finished, sobbing so hard that Draco thought she didn’t notice how ungrammatical her speech had become.  
  
“If Ginny is in control of it, then it won’t attack you in the same way,” Potter said gently. “You’ll never have to fear that.”  
  
“But will it  _look_  different?” Primrose shook tangles of hair out of the way, and some more tears, and glared at him. “That’s the thing that makes me frightened, and it’s the thing that you can’t promise will change.”  
  
“No, I can’t,” Potter said, gazing at her with a melting expression that made Draco wonder if he would have to do something about it. Because Potter  _could_ not look like that, and then pretend that he only cared about what Draco said and thought.  
  
 _That was never true,_  Potter snarled in the back of his mind, even while he physically put his arm around Primrose and tugged her against him. She sagged there, weeping. Potter smoothed her hair and glared at Draco as though he assumed Draco should somehow do the same thing.  
  
Draco shook his head and stood back. He thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Primrose had been aware that they had the egg for nearly as long as she had been in the camp. And how would she survive on her own? She apparently preferred death to being frightened, while Draco thought she should live with the fear and conquer it. That was what he had done with his fear of the Dark Lord.  
  
 _You didn’t have any choice,_ Potter’s reply came back, as sharp as an arrowhead.  _Hurricane is supposed to be about choices._  
  
Draco coughed into his sleeve so that he wouldn’t laugh. Of course Potter would say something like that, when a short time ago he had been reminding the Weasleys of facts and the way that they had to adapt to what Hurricane brought them, since they had chosen to come here and couldn’t go back.  
  
Potter ignored him once more, and whispered, “Hetty. Do you think you could get used to it, if you were to stay? You would never have to see the bird, never interact with it. If you just remained on the far side of the camp from the place where Ginny will train it—”  
  
“I would still see it in the air.” Primrose’s tears seemed to be done with, and she stepped away from Potter, bony arms folded. “I would still feel its shadow, and know what it could do to me if it got out of control.”  
  
Potter sighed soundlessly. “You don’t know where anyone else is, though. It was pure chance that you found us in the first place. How do you know that you’ll find anyone else if you start walking across the plains?”  
  
Primrose shook her head, which wasn’t the same as an answer, Draco noted. But Potter seemed to sense that it was impossible to argue with someone so chattering and overwhelmed, and he touched her forehead a final time, and let her go.  
  
“Let us at least give you some food,” Potter said. “Some of the boiled grass, seeds, those cakes that Ginny made last night—”  
  
Primrose smiled a little. “No, thank you. I have food that I’ve made myself, and one of those rabbit-like creatures that I killed. I don’t want the others to blame you because you’ve tried to be kind to me. I think the blame of this one is enough.” She gave Draco the kind of glance that made him blink, because it was infused with bitter steel he could almost respect.  
  
“I don’t blame you as much now,” Draco said.  
  
But Primrose, bitterly strong or not, was still too weak to understand him, as she proved when she stared blankly at him and then turned to Potter. “I don’t want you to be blamed for what you’re doing to help me, either,” she said.  
  
Potter shrugged. “I know that. But—what do you mean, one of the rabbit-like creatures?” Suddenly he was standing tall and staring back at Primrose. “We haven’t seen anything that looks like rabbits.”  
  
Primrose blinked back at him, then said, “Since you’re going to be good enough to let me go and not convince me to stay, then I might as well show you the warren I found.” She turned and strode into the thick grass. Potter followed her, his winds bending down the grass so that they could have an easier time of it. Primrose nodded back at him once and kept walking.  
  
Draco followed, because he was curious and because Potter’s mind brewed with emotions that might lead him to touch Primrose again.  
  
 _I’m not_ yours, Potter’s voice told him, thick with frustration.  
  
 _You’re as much mine as I am yours._  
  
Potter felt comprehensively silent. Draco smiled at the sky, gestured with his claws back and forth, and thought that life had never been sweeter.


	19. Learning to Hunt

Harry twitched his shoulders as he felt Malfoy’s thoughts press against him like knives. Or talons, as if one of those hatchling birds was riding on his back and he was responsible for feeding it with his blood.  
  
He could feel Malfoy’s free-blowing offense, like flags whipping in the wind, trail through his head. Harry ignored it. Malfoy was coming close to the same edge Bill had dropped off. He was too aggressive, too interested in one primary thing. Harry reckoned they could all be grateful that it was sex instead of meat, but when he could hear every thought about it that tended to cross Malfoy’s mind, he thought it still counted as legitimately annoying.  
  
“Here.”  
  
Harry blinked, only then realizing that Primrose had stopped walking in front of them. She looked at them with a patiently tilted head, then sighed and knelt down, parting the grass.   
  
Harry knelt down next to her, damning Malfoy when he had a silent fit about that, and peered at what Primrose was talking about. The grass was flat here, though hard to see from a distance because of the way that other stems rose above it. There was the slope of a tiny hill, Harry thought, and the holes Primrose pointed out were scattered along that, and Harry could see loosened earth when he peered more closely.  
  
That made him swallow and smile, because if there were identifiable characteristics to the place where these creatures preferred to live, then they could find more of them, and not annoy Primrose into staying with the group because she was the only one who knew how to find them.  
  
 _She should stay with us anyway,_ Malfoy’s voice whispered in the back of his head.  _She won’t survive on our own.  
  
So says someone who never thought anyone else’s fear but his own mattered, _Harry snapped, and then refused to listen to the wordless thoughts that assaulted him next. “What do the animals look like?” he asked, glancing around and wondering if he would spot one for himself. Of course, by now they had probably smelled all the humans—assuming they had noses—and gone underground for protection.  
  
“Like fatter rabbits, with shorter ears,” Primrose said, and sketched a fluffy ball in the air with her hands. “Most of them are gold and white, the color of the sunlight and the grass.”  
  
“Do they use the wild magic?” Malfoy, mature enough now to join the conversation instead of raging in the back of Harry’s head. Or maybe he just wanted a bigger audience for his objections, Harry thought, and received the sting of a whip from Malfoy’s direction. Harry laughed in silence. He had endured much worse pain in his life.  
  
Malfoy shoved frustration at him, in enough time that they could both listen to Primrose’s answer. Harry had wondered how he would be able to keep up a silent conversation and one out loud at once, but that seemed to be the answer: he and Malfoy “spoke” much faster than someone could respond with their voices, even someone who didn’t have reason to pause and think about the question, the way Primrose had.  
  
“Yes, they do,” Primrose said at last. “I suppose that I didn’t think it was very effective.”  
  
Malfoy’s claws rippled along Harry’s spine, and Harry nodded to show that he suspected the same thing. Primrose’s wild magic could manifest in this way, or possibly through a variation on keener eyes, like Teddy.  
  
“They go  _thin_.” Primrose lifted her wand and waved it, and a glamour appeared in mid-air, spinning between them. Harry blinked. Yes, the rabbit-thing did look fat and golden, a dull color that would almost disappear against the background of the plains. As Primrose continued casting, the rabbit rose and stretched out, arching its legs like a running horse. The fur melted into mist, and the body became shadow-like. “When I put my hands down where one had been, sometimes it wasn’t there, even though I had just seen it disappear a moment before.”  
  
Harry felt Malfoy’s gaze on the back of his head, and nodded again. It sounded like wild magic, all right, a variation of the trick that the mummidade did when they leaped out to hide in the grasses. “How did you first see them?” he asked, leaning back and looking up at Primrose.  
  
Primrose’s face reddened. “You’ll think it’s stupid,” she muttered, ducking her head.  
  
 _Probably,_ Malfoy’s voice whispered. Harry gestured him away as he would a fly and shook his own head, keeping his eyes gently on Primrose’s face. “We won’t,” he said. “ _I_ won’t, at least. How did you see them?”  
  
“I was keeping watch on the edge of the camp.” Primrose’s hand grew still for a moment, as though she was just remembering that she would never do that again, but then it moved on in a smooth arc and came to rest on her wand. “And I stared at a clump of grass that was swaying against the wind. I didn’t know if it was a danger, but I kept watching it for a long time. And then I saw the head poke out of it.”  
  
“How far above the ground?” Malfoy asked. Harry started. He had been about to ask that question himself, although he didn’t know why. Once again, Malfoy picked things up from him and translated impulses into words before he was ready.  
  
 _Get used to it,_ Malfoy whispered, and dropped to his knees behind Harry, his hands resting on Harry’s shoulders. Primrose blinked at them and answered.  
  
“A good way. It looked as though the rabbit had hopped up into the clump of grass and was eating the seeds near the top.”  
  
Harry nodded. The individual grass blades were so tall that it made sense that small creatures would need a way to reach the sweeter parts of their food. “And did it run when it noticed that you were watching it?”  
  
“I cursed it from a distance,” Primrose said. “It never heard me. When I went to retrieve the body, I saw another one, and it was so close and watched me so fearlessly that I reached out for it. That was when my hand went through it. They  _fly_ , in a way. This one disappeared from the clump of grass as it was hurtling towards the ground and appeared further away. I managed to track it until I found the warren, but I didn’t catch anymore that day.”  
  
Harry shook his head. He thought any one of them could have discovered this, if they had taken the care and paid the attention that Primrose had, but she was the one who actually had.  
  
“After that, I watched them until I could find a warren reliably.” Primrose nodded at the holes. “And I found that they only took flight when I actually moved towards them. You stay in one place for a while, and they get used to you and ignore you. Then you can kill them with a Cutting Curse.”  
  
“I can do better than that,” Malfoy said, and stretched behind them.  
  
“Maybe,” Primrose said, turning her head with a coppery contempt in her eyes that made Harry give up all notion of her being a coward. She feared the bird, but that was a special circumstance, given how many people she had seen it kill. “But if you slaughter a whole cluster of them, then you’re going to run out of them sooner.” She reached into a pouch slung over her shoulder and took out a chunk of what looked and smelled like dried ham. “This is what it looked like after I skinned it and pounded it flat and dried it in the sun.”  
  
Harry reached out a hand after a glance at Primrose for permission. The meat was layered in folds, and felt slightly tacky and dry to the taste. Primrose laughed when she saw Harry stick out his tongue. “It’s safe. I haven’t got sick or died yet, but it does rather give you diarrhea if you eat too much at once.”  
  
“How did you learn that?” Malfoy asked, as quiet and rough as though he had been ashamed instead of stunned by the knowledge. Harry glanced back at him, but for once, Malfoy’s closed face baffled him as much as anyone else. Malfoy just looked at the meat with half-shut eyes and shook his head. “We needed much more extensive testing on the meat from the bird.”  
  
“I had the training,” Primrose said simply. “There was a repertoire of spells that our mission leader thought we all ought to learn before we came to Hurricane, including the ones that the explorers used to test the air and food and water.”  
  
Harry shrugged when Malfoy glanced at him. He sure as hell hadn’t thought about that. On the other hand, it was doubtful that the Ministry would have shared any but the barest and most essential information about what the Unspeakables had learned with him or the Weasleys, so much did they hate them as political rivals.  
  
 _I still should have made a push to make sure that I learned them so I could teach them to the others, though. I owed it to my family to make them as safe as possible._  
  
 _Stop martyring yourself to something no one else thought of, either, Potter,_ Malfoy snapped back at him, and then faced Primrose. “And you won’t stay?” he asked. “We could use you.”  
  
Primrose stared at him. Then she said, “And  _you_ ask me that? When you are the most arrogant of the lot of them, the most determined to drive me away?”  
  
Harry rose and quietly moved behind Malfoy, to put his hands on his shoulders and restrain him. He thought he might need to, because Malfoy was shaking from the magic and the adrenaline that poured through him. Harry rubbed his shoulders and waited to see if he needed to intervene more than that.  
  
Primrose, for her part, faced Malfoy without backing down. Perhaps she thought Malfoy’s own declaration of her usefulness would keep him from attacking, Harry thought. Harry wasn’t so sure, but he would wait and see.  
  
*  
  
Draco was conscious of the desire to carve Primrose’s meat from her joints, and he did not like the impulse. He had walked through corridors of people chanting far worse things when he was on trial for his Dark Mark, he thought. What was it about this unimpressive woman that made her criticism sting?  
  
Perhaps simply that he would have expected such words from the Weasleys, not a neutral party. He had done nothing to help Primrose—other than hunting down the bird that had destroyed her comrades, which Draco thought ought to count—but neither had he done anything to hinder her.  
  
“I do not want you to leave,” he said. “I never suggested that you should.” His claws twitched, and he sheathed them by imagining them withdrawing into the tips of his fingers. The claws struggled against his control for a moment, but then went.  
  
Primrose shook her head. “I saw the way you looked at me, what you thought of me. Weak and silly and incompetent, unable to add to the encampment. Well, maybe I am useless to a camp that has a bird to fly.” For a moment, her lip trembled, and Draco found himself leaning forwards, ready to pounce on the vulnerability. Then Primrose’s lips thinned. “It made it worse that you weren’t conscious of it.   
  
“But yes, you’re arrogant. And you assume that everyone should agree with you because you can kill things. There are other talents that are needed more.” She looked pointedly at the strips of meat she still held before she stuffed them into the pouch hanging from her shoulder and moved away.  
  
“I didn’t try to drive you off,” Draco said. His voice was not loud, but she paused and looked back at him.  
  
“You weren’t welcoming,” she said. “And your arrogance is an overwhelming presence all its own.” Her eyes flickered to Potter. “You should try to restrain him. As it is, the others are muttering behind your back about what you allow him to get away with.”  
  
Potter grimaced and shook his head. Draco didn’t know what he would have said, because he was pressing ahead, and it was time that Primrose saw him as rational, if she didn’t. “I never spoke a single word to you.”  
  
“You’re unaware of the way that expressions show up on your face.” Primrose glanced down as Draco’s claws twitched and the heads of several small grass blades fell off. Potter picked them up with wind, probably because they contained the sweet seeds, and Draco wished he could be less  _practical_ for once and focus on what was in front of him, and Potter snapped back that Draco was doing a great job of being that short-sighted. “You think that because the two of you have the visible magic, you’re the only two that are worth anything. And the others notice that. Someday, you could find yourself cast out the way I am.”  
  
“No one’s casting you out,” Potter said, in a voice as soft as a breath. “I’m sorry, Hetty, but you’re the one who’s choosing to turn your back on the people who give you the greatest chance to survive.”  
  
Primrose’s eyes flickered back to Potter again. “From your perspective, I’m sure it looks that way. But I meant what I said, Potter. You tried to avenge me, you tried to welcome me in your own strange way, and you cared enough to come after me when you realized the bird had hatched out. Something no one else thought about, not even Molly.”  
  
“ _I_ was the one who told him to check on you,” Draco said.  
  
Primrose shook her head at him. Her words still went towards Potter. “But you find yourself encumbered by a  _schoolboy,_ someone who’s too caught up in his pride over a shiny new toy to realize he’s alienating others. And the same thing could happen to you, or so your friends fear. You have that magic, too, and this bond with him. Are they shiny enough to distract you? That’s what Molly is afraid of.”  
  
Potter bowed his head. “I didn’t realize,” he whispered. “I thought, because I told them that their suspicions hurt me—that they had realized what they were saying. But of course some of it’s just gone underground, and that doesn’t do much to heal their fear of  _me_.”  
  
Primrose nodded. “Exactly.”  
  
 _You aren’t responsible for how they feel about you,_ Draco flung in Potter’s direction, or words to that effect, but less polished and sophisticated than he wanted to make them.  _You aren’t. We discussed this. You won’t let them make you give me up. You_ won’t.  
  
Potter turned around. He might have dismissed Primrose from his presence entirely, which made Draco ache with pleasure, but his jaw was clenched, and the look he directed at Draco far from yielding.  
  
 _We’re together. I’m yours. That’s not in dispute._ Potter’s thoughts gleamed and traveled fast, like his winds, like Draco’s claws.  _I’ll never let you go. I won’t leave your side.  
  
But we have to do more than that if we’re going to live among the Weasleys. And despite your fantasies, Primrose is right. We can’t survive on our own. That means pulling together and getting along with the Weasleys. I’ll do more of that than you will. But remember what you said to me about not using my wand anymore, about relying too much on my wind? _  
  
Draco jerked his head down in a sharp nod. He hated that Potter had suddenly remembered and brought that up now. Of all the times for him to listen to Draco…  
  
 _We’re relying too much on each other. We’re forgetting. Hermione is the one who assured that we had something to eat here besides bird meat. Fleur calmed Bill. Angelina is our Healer. Ginny is the one in charge of the bird now, and Percy spoke up for us, and Charlie got the others to calm down long enough for the egg to hatch. All things we couldn’t have done or won’t learn as long as we’re this caught up in each other._  
  
 _Then you do want to walk away from me._ It was the only thing Draco could say, and the only thing he could think, and he was stunned and upset to feel the pain that thought caused him, as though he was a tree struck by lightning.  
  
Potter surged over to stand in front of him. Primrose was backing up step by step. Draco wanted to cut her, but Potter was more important, and he leaned forwards, silent, challenging, waiting.  
  
 _I don’t want to walk away from you._ Potter cut the words into the air between them, into the connection between their minds, with sharp chisels.  _I can’t. I just_ said  _that. But we have to start working with the others, too. Paying attention to them. Learning how to use this bond to the advantage of all in the camp, not just ourselves._  
  
Draco paused. Put like that, he couldn’t find much fault with Potter’s plan. But it also meant he wouldn’t have what he wanted: Potter’s full attention, the constant sweet yielding, the ability to fuck him wherever and whenever he wanted. Not if Potter was going to split his focus and spend some of it convincing the Weasleys that they were still their allies.  
  
Potter rolled his eyes.  _We have to do that, or be driven out. And I’ll have to find some way to do it without automatically taking over leadership, which is my first resort in any situation. You can help me with that. Help me use my wand to cast spells, and pull me back when I get too stubborn, and help me focus on you when I would spend too much time answering questions and doing things that they can easily do for themselves._  
  
Draco watched him quietly. It—perhaps was true, then, that Potter didn’t intend to abandon him.  
  
 _I_ said  _that and said that—_  
  
Draco touched Potter’s wrists, first the right and then the left, because he thought that might make him shut up, and shook his head. “I have to judge by your actions more than your words,” he murmured. “And now I’m convinced. Although not that it will be as much fun as what we had before it.”  
  
Potter shrugged, as if to say that he couldn’t care about that, and then turned towards Primrose again. “You won’t stay?” he asked.  
  
Draco didn’t know why they needed her to. She had done what she was called here to do, undoubtedly, telling them the truth about the bird and teaching him and Potter to act as a hunting team, and then confronting him with a perspective that had convinced Draco to act with Potter as a team in other areas, too. What more did they need her for?  
  
Potter glared at him. Draco shrugged and fired back at him,  _I’ll try to work better with the others, but I’ll always be different from you. I don’t see as much inherent worth in them as you do, that’s all._  
  
Potter was still finding his tongue when Primrose said, “I can’t. I have other things to do, other places to go.”  
  
Draco turned around to ask where she was aiming now that all the people she had come to Hurricane with were gone, but her eyes were bright and she trembled like a hawk poised for flight on someone’s glove. Draco blinked and shut up. He reckoned he would have to respect her after all.   
  
 _She’s on the journey that I wish Potter and I could have taken. She can leave and go anywhere she wants, and no one will stop her._  
  
Draco licked the salty bitterness from his lips and watched her. Perhaps it was stupid to envy her, after all, when she would go without a companion and her determination that she would survive was more than likely just delusion.  
  
“I’ll find something to do,” Primrose repeated, in a lower voice that made Draco’s bones buzz. “I’ve left you with the secret of the rabbit-creatures and how I prepared the meat. That’s as valuable a contribution as you could ask me to make.”  
  
“Yes,” Potter said, smiling at her.  
  
But mentally, he added to Draco,  _And she might have woken us up and got us to realize the way our bond looks from the outside without a sacrifice heavier than we wanted to bear. You wouldn’t have accepted those words coming from any Weasley._  
  
Draco started to snap back, but Potter reached out and rested a hand on his wrist, and through the bond flowed and flowered a gladness that made Draco keep still.  
  
They watched together as Primrose turned and vanished into the grass.  
  
*  
  
Harry sighed and closed his eyes. The weight and thought of work was already bearing down on him.  
  
Things weren’t settled with the Weasleys, after all. They would no longer openly poke him about Draco, but holes might open in the ranks if they didn’t settle things quickly. Harry hadn’t realized that his lavishing attention on Draco would be so resented by them. Or, at least, it would be resented if he kept on doing it the way he had been, with no attention to spare for anyone else and indulging all Draco’s whims.  
  
“You aren’t responsible for the way they feel.”  
  
“I am when it’s my actions causing it,” Harry retorted, and found, as he opened his eyes, that he was smiling.  
  
What had he come to Hurricane for, if not to work? To struggle. To make a new life. To raise Teddy, too, and keep him safe from the Ministry, and escape from the corrupt wizarding world, but he had known working would be a part of it.  
  
“You called me Draco. In your head.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “Yes, and aloud, earlier, even. This is the way things will be from now on, I think. Struggling and bouncing back and forth. Finding a place in a new world and thinking it’s the last, permanent one, and then learning something new.” He looked down at the small warren whose existence Primrose had revealed to them. “At least we have some animals that we can hunt, it sounds like. We won’t become allies with them even if they are sentient, and I think one of them would have tried to punish Primrose if they were.”  
  
Draco tightened his hand silently on Harry’s wrist and started to say something, but at that moment, the grass trembled in front of them and the mummidade came out.  
  
Two by two they came, the ones who had made up Hornlock and Grassgifted and others that they hadn’t seen before, mummid with brown eyes and blue, amber and green. They locked their hooves in place in front of them and stood there, watching, and Harry felt a vast consciousness that was that of the herd, from the number of images of spinning bodies twisting under the claws of birds that they flung at him.  
  
Their name could be Flight, and they wanted to know why there was a bird in the camp.  
  
Harry lifted his head proudly. He would explain this. He would do it without trying to make excuses or put himself in a place of leadership from which he couldn’t be questioned, his two great temptations. And he would go forwards into the future with the same attitude, because there was so  _much_ to be done, on Hurricane.  
  
“You’ll do it without thinking of yourself as alone, either,” Draco whispered into his ear, and stepped forwards at his side.  
  
Harry turned towards him, pulled him into a brief, hard embrace, and faced Flight, ready to explain.  
  
Draco was quiet at his side, for a few moments, but not for long, and it was their combined voices that spoke together.  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
